


A SSSSynesthesia Project

by Lazy8



Series: Musical Soup [2]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Experimental writing, Gen, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-10-22 04:22:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 45,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazy8/pseuds/Lazy8
Summary: The second part of the Alphabet Soup Challenge: Indefinite. Yes, I'm still doing the song thing.





	1. An Act of Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> **Inspiration:** "[An Act of Kindness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTM4GSJAZQ4)" by Bastille
> 
>  **Setting:** Post-mission, AU (Chapter 7, Character death)
> 
>  **Continuity:** Out of all the things I could have felt the need to build on... somehow I had to pick [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4099111) and [this](https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=193.msg41225#msg41225).
> 
>  **Characters:** Emil
> 
>  **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Emil
> 
>  **Warnings:** Major character death, depression, severe self-loathing
> 
>  **Other Tags:** Accidental death, fic of a fic of a fic, tragedy  
> ...  
>  I actually have had this written for a few days, I just felt like I needed a break from posting for whatever reason.
> 
> Anyway, I remember reading those stories and thinking 'Oh no, how could you do this?', closely followed by 'Oh no, this is going to follow Emil for the rest of his life.'

_An accident_ , all of the reports read after they cut their mission short and returned to the Known World. _Friendly fire_.

" _She did not suffer,_ " were the only words of reassurance that Mikkel had given him after he'd returned from his own trip to dispose of the body, carrying Emil's gun (which he never wanted to lay eyes on again) and the books that they'd found. " _Odds are, she did not even live long enough to realize what was happening._ "

Nobody had tried to tell him it wasn't his fault, because it was. That it had been an accident didn't make it any less so.

The two of them had separated to explore some ruins. Emil had had his gun out—and, like the idiot he was, he'd had his finger on the trigger. He'd been jumpy, and afraid of trolls. When Sigrun had unexpectedly come up behind him and called out a greeting, he'd acted not on his training but on rash instinct. Only when she had fallen to the ground, with a smile frozen on her face and a red blotch spreading over the front of her uniform, did he realize what he'd done.

Out of all the commanding officers he'd ever served under, _she_ was the only one who'd liked him, who'd trusted him to do his job, who'd given him a chance… and Emil had repaid her with a bullet through the heart.

"We're still ruined," Uncle Torbjörn bemoaned when the team came back with their pitiful haul. "This will barely cover the cost of the mission, let alone get us out of debt!"

Emil said nothing. His family could have the books and the money that they would bring, because he didn't _deserve_ to be out of debt.

When he returned to the Cleansers, nobody wanted to work with him, and Emil couldn't blame them. After what he'd done, _he_ wouldn't want to work with him either. So he plodded through his days, and didn't even _try_ to make friends, and endured the pranks and the cruel jokes without complaint, because he'd already proven himself to be worthy of nothing better.

Next winter, he took a leave from the Cleansers.

He hadn't known, at first, what he was going to do—only that he was a liability as he was, that any team he might have been assigned to would have been better off without him anyway. After a time, however, he found his feet and the tickets he bought always leading him west, west, until at last he stood in a small seaside village surrounded by mountains and finally realized what he wanted to do and who he wanted to see.

They weren't hard to locate, once he'd made a few inquiries: it was a small town where everyone knew everyone, and his targets in particular were so well-known as to border on fame. Actually _approaching_ them, though… but he would not chicken out. However they might react, the past year must have been hundreds of times worse for them than it had been for him. He would not deny them their closure in order to spare himself.

The hall fell silent as he approached the man and the woman in their medals and furs. He didn't need the word of anyone else to know, immediately, who they were—gods, the man looked just like her, with his red hair and large nose. The woman had her eyes. They were both in mourning, black armbands clearly visible atop their uniforms.

When Emil gave them his name, it was immediately clear that they knew who he was as well. When he asked to speak, they agreed to hear him out.

"It was an accident," he finished at last, forcing himself to tear his gaze from the floor and look up to meet their eyes. "But it was still my fault. If there's anything… any way I can…"

He had not expected the tears to come at that point—but once they did Emil was unable to stop them, and he stood there in the middle of the hall, his face in his hands and his breath coming in harsh gasps. _No_ , he told himself, no, he had no right, not in front of her parents and friends, it was not his death to mourn—but however briefly he had known her, she had still been his Captain, his mentor, and possibly some day, his friend. Try as he might, he could not make himself not feel her loss.

They did not take him to task for it. They allowed him to finish, not because he no longer _felt_ like crying but because he no longer had any tears left, and to lower his hands from his face. When he looked at the faces around him, he could see that he was not the only one there with overbright eyes.

Whatever recompense they might have demanded, he would have given it to them, gladly—whether it be more money than his family had lost, a lifetime of labor—even the sacrifice of his own life in return, he did not think he would have questioned. The only answer he had _not_ been prepared for was the one that they gave.

After his final offer, there was a long, long silence. At long last, however, the woman spoke.

"We hear your apology and accept your repentance." The words sounded as if she was reading them from a script. She took a deep breath. "But there is no reparation you can make that will bring our daughter back."

Her words were like a punch to the gut. Emil wished she actually _had_ punched him—or turned her sword on him, or had him sent to some uncivilized prison for twenty years of hard labor. Not being able to repay anyone, no chance left for him to offer closure… but this was exactly what he deserved, wasn't it? He had _no right_ to anything that would make _him_ feel better.

…he also had no right to ask anything more of them, even for them to ask something of _him_. They'd heard him out, which was more than they owed him. Allowing his eyes to fall to the ground, he hung his head, and nodded.

Sigrun's mother shook her head. "I suggest that you go home." Her tone was not harsh or cruel, but neither was it kind. "You can do nothing here."

Emil kept his eyes on the floor, and nodded again. What had he been _thinking_ , coming here? Sigrun's death had been hard enough on her family as it was, and here he was, with his presence, reminding them of just how preventable and _pointless_ that death had been. The only thing he'd been trying to accomplish was to make _himself_ feel better. Her mother was right; he should have stayed home.

As his feet had taken him west when he'd first begun his leave, they now took him out of that hall, up and down the steep mountain streets and past tall men and women in blue and brown uniforms. He didn't know where he was going, only that, while he could not force his presence on the bereaved family any longer, he wasn't yet ready to go back.

He knew what it was as soon as he saw it.

A memorial—not a grave; her grave had been in the Silent World, where Mikkel had burned her body. There were offerings at the base of the tree: toys, clothes. Medals she'd earned. Weapons. A family photograph in a frame, the man, woman, and their grinning child faded almost out of visibility after a year's worth of exposure to sun and rain.

"I'm sorry." Though his first words came out in a whisper, once he'd started to speak they began pouring out of him, louder and longer as he went on. "Gods, Sigrun, I'm so, _so_ sorry. I never should have signed up for that mission. I never should have tried to hide how green and incompetent and _stupid_ I was." The tears were now pouring freely from his eyes along with the words. "But none of that matters now, does it?" He swiped a hand across his face. "No matter how sorry I am, it's not going to bring you back."

He got no answer—Emil did not believe in the gods or magic or an afterlife, and he knew that the dead could not speak. Whatever he said here, she wasn't going to hear it. Still, though, he kept talking, kept apologizing, because even though he'd already accepted that he did not deserve any sort of closure or forgiveness, he was still a weak human and was still inclined to doing anything he could, no matter how futile, to make amends.

"You didn't deserve any of this," he went on, not even bothering to wipe his eyes anymore because no matter how many times he did it, his face was wet again within seconds. "You… you were the only officer who was ever nice to me. Who ever gave me a chance." He pounded his fist into the ground, not even caring when his knuckles made a jarring impact with a rock. "And look where it got you! A grave in the Silent World!"

"…I'm sorry," he continued at last, his voice back down to a whisper, after a few more minutes had passed and he'd once more cried himself out. "I didn't mean to imply it was your fault for trusting me. It was mine, for ever thinking that I could be a soldier."

Emil had come, and he'd said his piece, even though there was no longer anyone who could truly listen. After he had pushed himself to his feet, he unstrapped his own dagger, and propped it up against the trunk alongside all of the other gifts.

However many times he apologized, whatever amends he attempted to make, this was going to follow him for the rest of his life. It was done, and there was no undoing it. There was nothing Emil could do but learn to live with the guilt.

"Rest easy, Captain," he said, softly, before turning around and leaving Dalsnes for the last time.


	2. A Bit of an Awkward Situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikkel doesn't know whether his partner will be the death of him before she drives him crazy, or the other way around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Bit of an Awkward Situation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJnefvzjgMc)" by Tangerine Dream
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Mecha)
> 
> **Continuity:** Prequel to [Oxygen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22902855)
> 
> **Characters:** Mikkel
> 
> **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Mikkel
> 
> **Warnings:** Permanent injury, some descriptions of severe burns
> 
> **Other Tags:** Sigrun and Mikkel played up for contrast, more platonic soulmates yay!

In its posters and recruitment videos, the government loved to churn out propaganda about the great battles and the heroic life of a mech pilot, but there was one key detail that they consistently left out:

Life in the military was _boring_.

Every single day, it was the same routine: get up. Eat. Basic. Eat. Mech drill. Eat. Leisure. Bed. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, _some_ seemed innately suited to such a life—but unlike a certain redhead he could name, Mikkel could not be content with physical training and routine alone. He craved intellectual stimulation, which only made working with her all the more trying.

Had he been afforded the opportunity, he would have said no—no to being bonded to her, no to being saddled with someone who was so obviously going to make a habit out of trying his patience for the rest of his military career. Saying no, however, wasn't an option: you could only be _tarma_ bonded once. So he'd put aside his reservations, and accepted her too-hard backslaps and her too-loud greetings without complaint.

He hadn't even _tried_ to get his commanding officer to reassign him. He knew full well that Trond would only scoff.

" _What, you think that_ _I_ _got to choose? So tell me, what makes_ _you_ _so special that you think you ought to be the only person in several generations who gets to switch mechs because you don't like your tarma?_ "

There would have been no defense to a question like that, and Mikkel knew it, so he didn't ask. Instead, he restricted himself to wondering _why_ whatever quirk of technology that created the bond had decided that this was a good idea.

_As such things usually happened, it had been an accident. He had met Sigrun before and been annoyed by her, but hadn't thought much more about her until the days when the bonding had first begun._

_"There's no real way of checking," his more seasoned colleagues, those already bonded, had said whenever anyone had asked. "You just_ know _."_

_That made no sense when one was told about it secondhand, but when they got to the advanced stages of drilling and the bond first formed, they had indeed "just known". There had been no need to talk. It was so obvious to them that even notifying their superiors as was required had seemed ridiculously spurious, but notify they had._

_When he'd first realized it, he'd entertained the idea, briefly, of convincing her to to along with a vague plan, to each pick someone who was_ clearly _better suited to be partnered with them, and lie to their superiors—but that idea was dead on arrival, and he knew it. The deception would only last until they were out in the field. Mikkel had heard horror stories, not all of them made up to scare the recruits, of what had happened to those who'd had the bright idea of faking a_ tarma _bond. They only lasted until their first real encounter with a Beholder, at which point they would tear each other to pieces without the protection that the bond afforded. While comfort on a personal level would have been nice, Mikkel did not value it over his life._

"You ready, big guy?" Sigrun asked, grinning down at him as she strapped herself into the cockpit.

"Whenever you are," he returned as the lift took him up, barely holding back a sigh as he began his own strapping-in process. Another day, another battle, and hopefully this time they would also come back alive.

Their assignment, this time, was to take out a small outpost near the main station. They both shot off into space with nary a word.

Under normal circumstances, she might have annoyed him, but from the second they took the field, they were one.

Now, Mikkel could feel her eagerness, her bloodlust, and knew that she could feel his tempering influence in turn. Each was aware of the influence of the other. If need be, they could even break it, but such was highly unlikely. They did, after all, function better this way.

_Behind him!_ Mikkel gripped the controls and jerked his mech into a roll, feeling Sigrun's grin as she blasted his would-be attacker into oblivion. He did not thank her; he knew he did not need to.

Their mission. There were not an impossible number of Beholder pods surrounding the base, but there were enough. Mikkel would have advised caution. He could tell that Sigrun wanted to take the risk.

In the time it would have taken them to open their radio channels, they had already reached an agreement.

They shot through the swarm of attackers, dodging, shooting, covering each other's backs. They tried to destroy as many enemy pods as they could on the way. The fewer survivors they left, the better.

Shortly after they had torn through their attackers, they were tearing into the base.

_Don't see…_

_—there!_

_Get—!_

A flash of light, followed by an explosion.

_Out or…_

_In!_

They pulled together, and flew.

Debris and enemy pods whizzed past them. They were bombarded and shaken by the occasional explosion.

_Sigrun…_

_I know!_

They were going to take the risk, and tear straight through for the chance of destroying the base all at once.

When they finally did come out the other side, they were caught up in the explosion.

The last thing Mikkel was aware of was a string of obscenities that he wasn't sure had come from his own mind, or hers.

* * *

When he woke, he was in the base infirmary. Turning his head, he saw Sigrun in the bed beside him, still unconscious, her arms heavily bandaged and a shroud of white covering half of her face.

First, he realized that he could not feel their bond. Then, he realized that he could not feel his legs.

Later, he'd learn that she'd crawled through the fires of her own exploding mech to drag him to safety before his suffered a similar fate, that she'd refused to let go even though her own skin had been sloughing off until others had come to help. Later, he'd be too busy grieving the loss of the use of his legs to be glad for his life, and too busy preoccupied with who'd gotten them into that situation than to be grateful for who'd gotten them out of it.

When they'd first been partnered, Mikkel had thought that she would annoy him to death. Now, as it turned out, it was the silence that would kill them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...apparently every time I hear a Tangerine Dream song, from now on it's going to end up in this AU.
> 
> Once again, I was all set to write some angsty Onni angst, when... these two came up to me and insisted on telling _their_ backstory.
> 
> "Really, guys? I was in the middle of... you know what, fine!" *grumbles*


	3. A Comet Appears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once Upon a Time, a girl who was not a girl made a different choice... and lived to regret it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** This one is a twofer: "[A Closeness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ut785pfMZM)" by Dermot Kennedy, and "[A Comet Appears](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DmuVLYfEoQ)" by The Shins
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Medieval fantasy), Alternate Universe (Transgender)
> 
> **Continuity:** Alternate ending to "[Step It Out Mary](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/23070309)"
> 
> **Characters:** Emil
> 
> **Relationship:** Emil/Lalli
> 
> **Warnings:** Misgendering, forced marriage, thoughts of self-harm and suicide, implied public humiliation
> 
> **Other Tags:** Trans!Emil, Aliax is gonna hate me for this, but I swear it's actually Talimee's fault for making that drawing, at least it's not canon to the main continuity right?

**A Closeness**

Lalli should have known better than to believe it could work.

He'd never in his life been that close to anyone—not since he'd been driven from his homeland by the deaths of his family and his grandmother's disgrace. From the second he'd set foot in a strange country and heard their strange words, he'd known that he was always going to be alone. Then, though…

…then, he'd woken up in a curtained-off alcove in a drafty castle with a splitting pain in his head and a beautiful girl holding his hand.

She was a noble. They didn't have those where he was from, but Lalli had learned quickly after coming here that the people who wore the stupidest and most impractical clothes were supposed to be given the most respect, and a failure to grovel would result in… lots of shouting. Humiliation. Trapped, in full view of a crowd of jeering people…

Whatever he did, he must not offend her.

Still, when everyone else had left and given up on him, she stayed.

She seemed… sad, somehow. Even when she'd told Lalli her name it seemed as if she was choking on every syllable. The first time he touched her face, it had been an innocent attempt at comfort, but when she'd leaned into the touch, as if she wanted more…

From the very first touch, Lalli had known that he should stop. People like him did not consort with nobles; that was what everyone here had told him ever since he'd arrived, not in words but very clearly all the same. Even though he was putting himself in danger, though, he couldn't make himself pull back, not when his kisses and touches and even his sly smiles seemed to bring her happiness, however briefly.

He should have known better, he thought bitterly. He should have known it could not last.

She had wanted to say something, he could tell, that final time she'd come to him in the night. She'd looked at him; her mouth had moved, her hands had twitched, but no words would come out, and in the end she'd hastily blurted something—something that had sounded like an apology—and fled from his sight.

That had been the last time they'd seen each other face to face.

After she'd left, Lalli was bitterly angry—not at her, but at himself. He did not ask why she'd done it; he knew why. What could he, a common footsoldier with no money and no possessions but the clothes on his back, offer to someone who'd lived her life behind those stone walls, clothed in fancy dresses with servants at her beck and call? What sort of life could he give her but the one _he_ was used to, filled with hunger and cold and danger? No, he could not blame her for choosing her own safety and comfort over _his_ selfish wishes for companionship.

Still, he continued to watch her, from the shadows. From a distance, always a distance—first society, and now she herself, had forbidden him that closeness.

He saw the healer, in the company of another red-haired servant, loading her things into a covered wagon. He saw her climbing into that wagon, saw the servant taking the reins. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he saw a lingering redness around her eyes.

Then, the servant had flicked the reins, and she was gone—forever.

* * *

**A Comet Appears**

There was a legend among his people that comets were an omen of doom, sent to them by God to warn them for their sins.

Personally, he wasn't worried—not because he had never sinned, but because his whole life had already been one long punishment.

Every day now, he stood in front of the mirror and looked at himself, only to find a woman staring back at him—aging, tired, stooped with pain and fatigue from too many births and too much worry and not enough care. He knew that if he kept looking, one day he was going to snap and break not only the mirror, but turn the shards of glass against the face and body that God had given him but that were not his own, attack his body for its betrayal, his eyes so he would no longer have to look at it, his throat or wrists to release himself from _everything_ , once and for all… he knew the consequences of looking, but somehow he could not seem to make himself stop.

The comet, he thought, looked like a dagger as it hung in the sky night after night. It made him think of his true self, of Lalli, of that fateful decision he had made one night after the healer had reminded him that there was no such thing as deliverance…

It had been years since the last time he'd thought of Lalli—it had been years since the last time he'd _let_ himself have such thoughts, but that dagger he saw in the sky seemed to bring it all back, all at once. Lalli had to have hated him for what he'd done, but not as much as he would have if he'd found out what he _really_ was. Oh, how he wished he'd at least told Lalli, when he thought about it now—then, he'd been afraid, of rejection or even outright violence, but now he wondered whether it would have been better to suffer the worst of Lalli's wrath if it would have meant that his last memory was of being true to himself.

He wondered, sometimes, what Lalli was doing now. He hoped, at least, that Lalli had found someone else… someone who'd never had to pretend to be something she wasn't, who was worthy of his affections…

His husband was gone now, off on another trip trading wealth and pushing money around, but instead of the peace and tranquility his absence should have brought, there was only a crushing loneliness. He could not talk to the servants. He could not talk to the other noblewomen. He could not talk to the commoners. The Barbarians… now _there_ was an idea, except none of his own people would let him get anywhere _near_ a Barbarian, and with good reason. _His_ only reason was the same reason he kept staring into the mirror day after day.

The early summer weather was beautiful, light with the scent of flowers and heavy with the scent of rich loam, the days bustling with the promise of a bountiful harvest to come—but the heavy skirts would not let him run to take in the beauty on his own terms, and the coverings on his head would not let him feel the pleasant breeze.

And yet… and yet.

Day after day, neglecting his duties and the danger of trolls, he would abandon the fortress to sit instead just outside of the village walls, staring at the forest, and wonder.

What if he had made a different choice?

Wondering wouldn't do him any good, and he knew it. There were ledgers to be kept, children to be looked after, and servants to supervise. Still, though…

…still, as he made his way back to his haven of safety and security he was no longer even sure he wanted because of the price he'd had to pay for it, the image lingered in his mind of himself, aging, his face a man's face, resting in the arms of another silver-haired man, the whole vision awash with a sense of peace and contentment that he knew he could no longer have.

He told the guards that the tears on his face were of worry for his husband's safety.

* * *

Comets, Sigrun had told him, were a sign from the gods—portents of disaster, sometimes, or simply of momentous changes. Lalli had told him that they were messengers between the realms, that they meant the spirits were talking, whether for good or ill they would only know in time.

Emil wasn't sure he believed either one of those explanations. After years of thought, he'd rejected any notion of serving the gods— _any_ gods, whether the One God he'd been brought up to worship, Sigrun's divine warriors, or even Lalli's nigh-unknowable spirits of nature. No matter their differences, the reason was always the same: if ever he wanted to believe, it was never a matter of faith, but rather because he needed someone to _blame_.

Still, though, when he saw that white blur hovering in the sky, in the shape of a woman's head with her long hair streaming out behind her, he could not help but think of the past… and wonder.

He was dreaming, now, dreaming frequently of a woman who was not a woman trapped in an unhappy life, spending every day immersed in a crushing loneliness. Every morning, he woke with tears on his face, and a keen sorrow piercing through his heart as the life he could have had continued to appear before him, seeming more real than ever before, and he wept for the person who had been unable to find the courage to take the risks that he had taken.

When Lalli asked, he explained what the tears had meant—but they both knew that there was nothing they could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The drawing is by Talimee, and was used with permission.
> 
> I was in the process of vetting songs for C, started listening to "A Comet Appears", and immediately knew we had a winner when I broke down crying.
> 
> The inspiration behind the comet as a divine messenger providing a glimpse into alternate realities, funnily enough, comes directly from one of those sappy Christmas movies I ended up watching by proxy during the couple of months I spent crashing on my grandmother's couch, where a woman who's at a low point in her life gets sent forward in time by a comet (Because Christmas Miracle, Hel if I know) so she can see the lasting consequences of all the good she's done.
> 
> Anyway. Yeah. Magical Comet.


	4. A Demon's Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun should have noticed something was wrong from the moment he first joined her crew... but then again, she's never been used to dealing with evils of a more human nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Demon's Fate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR_gcRp5v-k)" by Within Temptation
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Universe (evil!Mikkel, no Sleipnope or murderghosts)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun, Mikkel
> 
> **Warnings:** This one has quite a few...
> 
> Violence: Gruesome character death, blood, gore
> 
> Abuse: Gaslighting, humiliation, deliberate medical neglect, and some unspecified stuff that's left up to the imagination; take that as you will
> 
> Villainization of a main character: Can potentially be seen as bashing (but see notes at the end of the story), including some of said character's canon flaws being interpreted in the most sinister light possible and his good traits being deliberately erased
> 
> **Other Tags:** Darkfic, blame it on Aliax the Evil Enabler

_She should have known, damn it!_ That thought bludgeoned its way insistently through her head, in time with the throbbing pain in her arm, as she pushed herself mercilessly forward through the howling wind and lashing rain. _He'd_ certainly never failed to remind her of that fact—and never mind that it was yet another way he'd landed on to needle her; he was _right_. Whatever ills he had done—and he _had_ done them on his own initiative; there was no doubt about that—at the end of the day, Sigrun was still the Captain. Keeping the crew in line was _her_ responsibility.

Of course, there was still the question of what to do with someone who'd actively _chosen_ to defy all standards of protocol in addition to all human decency…

_"I'm sorry!" Half of Emil's face was covered in blood, but it was probably not as bad as it looked—head wounds bled a lot, and he was still speaking in ways that made sense; in her experience that meant he would likely recover quickly. "I swear I thought his hands were tied better than that—"_

_"It's okay, buddy. He kept getting the drop on us before, no surprise he could do it again." She pushed herself to her feet, pressed a hand to Emil's shoulder when he would have risen too, and beckoned the Icelander over from where he'd been ducked behind the door. "Have Freckles take a look at your head while Lalli and me are gone."_

_"But I can—"_

_"_ Stay. Here. _"_

_It could have been worse. It could have been much worse. Had Emil panicked and thrashed around rather than freezing immediately, had Lalli not been quick enough, had Mikkel prioritized hurting them over getting away…_

A skinny figure sliced through the rain in front of her. He beckoned.

_Emil… she'd seen what he'd done to Emil. Seen, and done nothing. At the time, it had not seemed like something that_ needed _to be addressed—the pranks were harmless and usually gave the rest of them a good laugh even if they did leave Emil slumped and sulking and unwilling to speak to anyone for the better part of a day. It was hazing, it happened to everyone; Sigrun had gone through similar, at the beginning of her army days. Eventually, it would stop, and Emil would get over it._

_…except Emil hadn't gotten over it, and it hadn't stopped, and by the time Sigrun had realized that something was really wrong she'd been too sick herself to do what she should have done months ago, and put Mikkel in his place._

_Lalli… she didn't even have an inkling of what he'd done to Lalli._

_All she had to go on, where Lalli was concerned, were her own observations and the word of the rest of the crew. He was jumpy and on edge. Emil said he wasn't eating. Sigrun could see he wasn't sleeping, even when ordered. Tuuri claimed that he had never liked being touched, but she'd also noted that the degree to which he shied away from human contact now was unusual, even for him._

_Somehow, Sigrun did not think that she would ever know the extent of the abuse that Lalli had suffered—and the fact that it had been going on right under her nose rankled. Lalli might have been strange, but he was still one of her own. It had been_ her _job to protect him, and in that, she had failed—just as she'd failed the rest of her crew._

Lalli pointed. She followed the line of his arm.

The nearby forest and rain-slick rocks were no different from any other part of Silent Denmark that she could see, but then again, that was why she'd brought the scout with her: because he could see things that she couldn't. She nodded. Her fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger. "Danger?" she asked.

He hesitated. His head turned to look into the forest, and she could see that he had his _pukko_ in hand, yet he was giving her no solid warning. Lalli must be unsure himself, at this point.

Sigrun sighed, and reached out to pat his shoulder, but he danced away from her, glaring. For a second they stared at each other, each unsure how to handle the other's reaction, but then she shook her head, and pointed.

"Let's go."

It was much darker under the dripping trees, and larger fatter droplets congealed in the branches to plop onto her head or down the collar of her jacket when she walked under them. Normally, the cold did not bother her, but now Sigrun shivered.

_It wasn't until they were scouting out a series of derelict buildings, and she'd nearly collapsed on top of Emil, that she'd even realized she was running a fever. It wasn't until Reynir was pushing up her sleeve and sucking in his breath that she realized just how far the wounds had been let go._

_It was pure dumb luck that she'd conceded to bring Mikkel with them on the raid, that he'd separated from her and Emil, that Emil had decided to help her back to the tank first and_ then _find the medic, that Reynir had chosen that moment to speak up and say he might be able to help… so many coincidences. Too many. She hoped this meant the gods were on their side, because they were going to need every bit of help they could get._

_"I hope that this has made you realize the consequences of neglecting your wounds." Fever or no, she was sure she wasn't imagining that he sounded smug. "But, since you are_ clearly _no longer in any state to lead, that leaves me with no choice but to relieve you of command."_

Stupid _, was the only thing she could manage to think as she lay there shivering._ Stupid, stupid, stupid. _Stupid of her, to put her own pride first, to not get treated, to never once consider what to do if that growing unease in her mind ever solidified into something more tangible…_

Sigrun had always known she was not smart. Most of the time, she didn't care: when you were out in the field, all you needed to know was how to not die, and all the book learning in the world wouldn't do you a lick of good when you were face-to-tentacles with a slobbering giant. Then again, most of the time you just needed to outsmart the trolls and beasts. It had never once occurred to her that she'd ever be pitted against a member of her own _crew—_ nor that he'd be able to beat her with such ease.

_The man didn't look like a monster. To her eyes, he looked like just a man: an ordinary man, like anyone she might pass on the street._

_…a dead man, now, limp and lifeless and leaving a red stain in the snow. A single shot, clean, straight through the head._

_Uncle Trond showed no emotion as he handed her his rifle, before kneeling down to check the body for any lingering signs of life, and Sigrun knew she shouldn't regret this death either. After all, he'd already told her what the man had done._

_"You're quite adequate at killing things that are no longer human," Trond said to her as he pushed himself to his feet. "Are you capable of this?"_

_Sigrun did not answer. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the rifle._

Now, her fingers curled again over the hilt of her dagger. As it had turned out, there were some things she wasn't capable of—not in cold blood. Maybe it was weakness, maybe it was simply a part of being human, but it didn't mean she couldn't do what was _necessary_. If the need arose in defense of her own life, or Lalli's, she would not hesitate, and she would not regret it.

_"You're not going to shoot me, Sigrun."_

_She snarled. She was sick of the sight of that smirk on his face, and she was in no mood for these games. "Try me."_

_"For one thing, I don't think you can even hold a gun steady with that arm of yours."_

_She shrugged with one shoulder. Her arm was indeed back in the sling, bound up close against her body, and pain shot up to her shoulder every time she tried to move it. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I can't."_

_"Well then." He shrugged, began to move—only to be interrupted by the crack of a rifle, and a bullet spraying up dirt in front of his feet. She turned to a rusted-out car husk—and the head of silver hair she could just see peeking up above it—and gave Lalli a nod of approval._

_"I can't, but_ he _can." Sigrun turned to look Mikkel straight in the eyes. He was frozen, and now the smirk was gone from his face; he looked as if he would very much have liked to do something violent, but she had carefully chosen her position well out of arm's reach; if he tried anything, Lalli's next bullet would find his head or his heart well before his fingers so much as brushed her skin. "That was a warning. He won't miss again."_

Lalli, she knew, had it in him to do what Trond had once asked of _her_. Though she was glad to have him by her side right now, she somehow didn't think it a bad thing that she couldn't say as much of the _rest_ of her crew.

_"Emil." She'd sat him down outside of the tank, just out of casual hearing distance but close enough for them to notice if someone shouted—just in case._

_"…yes?" He looked nervous. Sigrun plopped herself down across from him, and looked him directly in the eye._

_"You're getting to be a pretty good shot with that gun." She nodded towards his rifle, which he held loosely at his side. She was watching him closely enough to notice it when his fingers tightened. "Could you use it on a person?"_

_It was clear what his answer would be even before he opened his mouth._

They saw the blood well before they saw the body.

At first, it was only a few splotches—but those splotches told a gruesome and all-too-familiar tale. The ground had been disturbed, and even Sigrun, who was not a trained scout, could read the story well enough in the marks that remained: clods of softened mud flung in all directions by frantically kicking feet, a swath wiped clear of pine needles as something (or some _one_ ) big and heavy was dragged across the ground.

Sigrun looked at Lalli. Lalli looked at Sigrun. He was waiting for _her_ word, she knew. Now, she had to decide: would she put their lives, and by extension the rest of the crew's, at risk in order to save someone who would just as gladly kill _them?_

The right thing… she didn't even know what the right thing was anymore. Why go to all this effort to save someone from himself, when he'd put them in danger, when he'd abused them for months, when he'd be dealt with just as harshly back home, if they even managed to _get_ home at this rate? Maybe it was a sense of duty, an unwillingness to abandon any member of her crew over any personal grudge, however justified. Another, larger part of her mind insisted that she had to make _sure_ , that if she didn't see the truth with her own eyes she'd spend the rest of her life waking up in a cold sweat wondering when he was going to return. Finally, there was a small corner of her mind that remembered what it was that had vanished from the tank and knew that they had to get it back if at all possible.

She waved Lalli forward.

_As Reynir worked on her arm and she lay there with a fist stuffed into her mouth trying not to scream, she realized that Mikkel had been trying to kill her._

_Oh, he'd always avoided doing anything that could implicate him directly—it was what he_ hadn't _done that mattered. As a matter of fact, it had been so gradual that_ she _hadn't even noticed until it was almost too late. The first few days, he'd cleaned wounds and changed dressings with regularity, and Sigrun, who'd learned early on in her career that you don't want to watch, hadn't. So of course she hadn't thought to check whether he was cleaning thoroughly… whether he was checking for infection_ before _it got out of hand… whether that slow tapering off of care was normal or a sign of something dangerously wrong…_

_It wasn't until he revealed his game because he thought he'd won that she realized how badly things could have ended. "_ She neglected to care for her wounds, _" he'd tell them, when everyone was back home and her body was long cold. "_ By the time I noticed the infection, it was already too late. _" At which point nobody else would be able to contradict him: not even her own crew would have been able to give solid evidence that things were not exactly as he had said._

_…and that was the_ best _case scenario. Far as she could figure, he'd been so keen to get rid of her because he'd always seemed to think that_ he _could do better—or he could lead the rest of the crew straight to a silent grave._

Sigrun wondered what he'd been thinking when he'd run off. Trying to do better—convinced that he could survive the perilous last leg of the journey through the Silent World without any help from them? Or simply unwilling to take the risk that the return to civilization would bring?

When they reached the end of the blood trail, Sigrun looked away.

It was not that she had never seen such gruesome sights before—she had, many times. Didn't make it any more pleasant to look, and you never got used to it, no matter how often you'd had to stare death in the face.

Lalli pointed at the body. He was asking a question, but Sigrun shook her head. However many times she had messed up, she was still the Captain of this crew. Doing this was _her_ job.

"Watch my back," she said to Lalli, before picking her way down among the rocks.

It was hard, to climb over slippery rocks with the use of only one arm. Harder still, when her good hand was constantly hovering over the hilt of her knife. Reflex: she was sure the scout would alert her if anything was still lurking nearby, but when you'd gone long enough without feeling safe it was hard to magically go back to trusting your circumstances.

She did not hesitate as she re-sheathed her dagger, did not flinch as she bent to search the pockets. The body still carried a few traces of lingering warmth, but it was rapidly cooling, and no pulse beat in the exposed neck. Sigrun could confirm that last bit: she'd made sure to check.

"Go back?" Lalli asked, when she'd scrambled back up, having folded the precious notes and tucked them into her own jacket, away from the rain.

Sigrun nodded. "Go back."

The gods had indeed been on her side for this one, and though she was still injured and weary, Sigrun had work to do. First and foremost, get the rest of her team out alive. Then… or _if…_ it would be time to make it up to them, for not having looked out for them like she should have.

The man she hadn't been able to kill lay bloodied and exposed to the elements in his unmarked grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another one I'm not posting on the main forum due to adult themes...
> 
> Okay, I _really_ did not intend this as character bashing, because as much as his behavior sometimes bugs me, and as sick as I get of people blaming only Sigrun for everything that goes wrong even when at least part of it is _clearly_ his fault, I do not think that Mikkel is actually like this in canon. Not a team player and sometimes a bit of an ass, yes. Full-blown psychopath, no. This is an AU version of Mikkel without any of his canon counterpart's good traits (and yes, I think he does have them!). This story came about not out of any dislike toward Mikkel as a character, but out of me thinking (again, with the prompting of A Certain Evil Enabler involved) "What if Mikkel was an evil psychopath?" would be a neat idea to play around with.
> 
> Also, much thanks to said Evil Enabler for repeatedly idea-bouncing with me.


	5. An Epic Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate threw them together. They had to learn to adjust to each other. They had to learn to appreciate each other. And now, they must truly work together, for they have one last loose end to tie up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[An Epic Age](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbdBbmKEH3c)" by Immediate
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Urban Fantasy)
> 
> **Continuity:** Same universe as "[Dead Man's Party](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/21819590)", "[Night on Bald Mountain](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22801544)", "[Personal Space Invader](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22932930)", and "[Quantum Immortality](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22978800)"
> 
> **Characters:** Lalli, Reynir
> 
> **Relationship:** Lalli  & Reynir
> 
> **Warnings:** Some horror and vague mentions of really unsavory cult practices
> 
> **Other Tags:** More paranormal investigators AU, teamwork yay!

"This is it? Um… wow."

Lalli looked at Reynir, who was busy gaping up at the crumbling exterior of the old abandoned temple, but didn't say anything. Of course this was it; Lalli wouldn't have brought him here otherwise.

_"It's a symbol of an ancient religion," Onni informed him when they met in the Dream Plane, and Reynir sketched out the sign he had seen in his vision: a cross, one of whose sides was longer than the other three. "One that died out a long time ago. They had only one god to protect them, and he forbade them from using magic, so they could not protect themselves."_

_Reynir, next to him, shivered. Lalli didn't, but he could still feel a chill of disbelief running up and down his spine. Not use magic? And only one god to protect them? No wonder they'd died out. Atheists, at least, had a choice, and Lalli had already seen how vulnerable people were who weren't under the protection of_ any _gods… people like Emil…_

_"So what does it mean?"_

_Onni glared. It was bad enough being glared at by Onni under_ normal _circumstances, but when he was in his owl form he didn't even blink. "It was your vision, wasn't it? That's up to you to figure out."_

_"Well?" Tuuri asked when he woke. "What did he say?"_

_Lalli looked at Tuuri across the hospital bed where Onni lay in a coma. Beside her, Emil shivered, but Lalli did not know how to answer either one of them._

_"I've called my old teacher," Reynir answered for him. "She's retired now, but she's agreed to come here and stay with Onni until he recovers—and both of you, as well. So you won't be left unguarded while we figure out what to do next."_

_Reynir either did not react to Lalli's expression of gratitude, or he did not notice it at all._

"Do you know why your vision told us to come here?" Lalli, while not a practitioner, had recognized some of the different kinds of magic that had been used on Emil. They were all known. Knot magic, blood sacrifice, the use of staves… all could be explained without appealing to a religion that was long dead, and whose followers hadn't even been allowed to use magic.

"I don't know." Reynir was still gaping up at the cross on the roof. "But this is definitely the right place. We _need_ to be here."

There was currently no place on the planet Lalli would rather be less. The area was completely isolated: a broken-down building off a dirt side road leading to a ghost town that had only been preserved for its architecture. If they needed help, it would take at least half an hour for anyone to reach them, and that was assuming anyone managed to _find_ them without getting hopelessly lost first. If they needed to get out of here fast, even reaching the car would be a struggle: they'd parked at least twenty minutes' walk away, so as not to alert anyone to their presence.

Reynir was fidgeting. "Maybe we should call the police…"

"The police can't do anything." Only mages could handle mages. Worse, he knew that Sigrun's partner was an atheist. If the two of them were the ones sent to help them out with this—and they would be, he was sure—she would be just as vulnerable as Emil.

He looked at Reynir again. He was scared, Lalli could tell, the bravado he'd shown earlier seeming to vanish when he actually had time to _think_ about the danger he was in.

"Do you want out?" Lalli didn't want to do this alone—but he wanted to go in with an uncommitted partner even less.

Reynir hesitated, swallowed… but then stood up straighter. "No." The fear was still there, but his voice was steady. "It was my vision. I'm coming."

Lalli nodded. Then, the two of them walked forward, side by side.

The place was shadowed, and decrepit. Clearly it had not been used for many, many years. The absence of _human_ worshipers, however, need not mean anything, and Lalli was on high alert as he scanned the shadows for anything creeping through.

_Something_ was going on here. This place had been built over a reservoir of power.

Lalli had been very, very right when he'd guessed that nothing _living_ had been in here for at least a few decades. Not even rats, for whom the still-intact roof would have provided a convenient shelter from the elements… not even _cockroaches…_

_It was here._

Reynir and Lalli both tried to leap backward at once, but the door slammed shut behind them, plunging them into darkness. In what little light was left leaking in through the narrow windows, a shadow materialized before them…

The paralyzing fear washed over them, but… Reynir's runes were glowing.

The _runes_. Reynir had woven them into every layer of his clothing. He'd carved them onto the wooden disks he wore around his neck. He'd even braided a few smaller disks into his _hair_. Now, those runes were infusing the dark interior of the temple with a warm yellow light, holding back the darkness and the fear.

Lalli opened his mouth.

The first note was small and wavering, a mere flicker in the face of the pressing darkness, but he did not stop, and pushed the next note out of his vocal cords, and before long he had found a steady rhythm as he prayed to his gods for protection and worked to drive the restless spirits out.

Reynir was not standing idle. Though he'd also frozen at first, the sound of Lalli's voice had seemed to give him courage, and now he was pacing around in a circle, sprinkling salt on the floor in a pattern that was centered on the spot where Lalli stood in between the rows of wooden benches… a very _specific_ pattern…

As they worked, a medium-sized sheepdog and a glowing silvery lynx had materialized out of nowhere to pace in a circle around them, growling at any of the unseen things that dared to get too close. Though the actions of his spirit were a strain on his body, Lalli knew that this time, he would not collapse: his soul was in a tight orbit about his body, its power tempered, the other soul beside him providing a measure of support that he had never before enjoyed.

The floor underneath his feet lit up.

They needed to keep going. Neither one of them could have defeated this thing alone. Together, though…

…together, they could fathom the true power of this place, and _harness_ it.

…for people who were allowed to practice no magic… this hadn't just been a place to worship… it had been a _sanctuary…_

…right up until their religion had died out, and _others_ had discovered their place… a place with near-limitless power to draw from… a place where they could practice and summon and be shielded from prying eyes…

… that power, made all the more potent not in spite of but _because_ of the fact that it had been drawn on against the tenants of a sacred place, to begin the summoning of something that was the antithesis to all strictures of the people who had once worshiped here…

Without consulting, without even knowing that they were going to do it, Reynir and Lalli stepped closer together. Whatever religion had once sheltered here, its time was over. Now, they were going to ensure that the empty husk it had left would never again be used for such purposes.

Lalli was still chanting, and Reynir's rune was complete upon the floor. They clasped forearms. They looked into each other's eyes.

The magic they wielded was different. They worshiped different gods. In working together, they'd both had to learn how to bend and compromise, to accept each other's habits and oddities, to recognize the ways in which their strengths complemented each other's weaknesses. Lalli didn't think that anything like this had ever been attempted before… but he hoped that what they'd already accomplished would be enough to make it work.

Lalli raised his voice in the climax of his prayer. The pendant on Reynir's neck swung forward to hover over the center of the rune on the floor.

There was another flash of light.

* * *

When they woke, they were both lying on the floor, and a fine coating of dust had settled over their hair and clothes. Their hands were still joined.

Slowly, they got up and dusted themselves off. The power was gone. The presence was gone. Instead, there was only a dead, broken-down place of worship, and a faint light streaming in through the high windows.

Their goal had been accomplished. They looked at each other, and smiled.

The building was left empty as they walked out into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that marks the climax of the Paranormal Investigators AU. I hope it was decent... it still feels to short to me...


	6. A Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lalli is a scout - a _good_ scout. So why is it that his abilities seem to be failing him right when they're needed most desperately?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Forest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGT4V6JmINA)" by The Cure
> 
> **Setting:** Post-mission, Dreamworld
> 
> **Continuity:** Prequel to "[Fortitude](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8511595/chapters/19508083)"
> 
> **Characters:** Lalli
> 
> **Relationship:** Lalli  & OC
> 
> **Warnings:** Implied child abuse
> 
> **Other Tags:** Mages and magic, spirit animals

_Where are you?_

The past three days, he'd been having that dream. The past three days, he'd heard the same voice calling out to him—crying for help.

_I don't know._

_What can you see?_

_Trees…_

_What did you see on the way there?_

_I don't_ know!

The girl… he'd seen her before, but never in the flesh. Always, she'd come to him in his dreams.

At first, he'd thought little of it. After all, she wasn't the first foreign mage who'd rudely wandered into _his_ space. Still, he couldn't throw a kid out into the darkness as easily as he could the stupid Icelander, so the first night, he'd let her stay. And then the next night after that… and the next after that…

When he'd finally confided in Emil, the first thing he'd blurted out had been the one thing that Lalli _hadn't_ thought of:

"Wait, why is _she_ asleep during the day?"

When he asked the next night, her answer—or lack thereof—had left him with an unidentifiable sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Then, the hare had come.

_Help…_

The next time he'd seen _her_ , she'd been shaking and sunken-eyed, limping rather than running into his haven. When he'd tried to pat her head, she'd yelped in pain and cringed away.

_"What's wrong?"_

_"Mom took me." She shivered._

_"Where?"_

_"A forest…"_

Every night since then, Lalli had been searching for her. The hare had been able to lead him in the right general direction, but it didn't know her true location any better than she did.

" _Do whatever you have to,_ " Emil had told him, decisively, before he'd even finished the first sentence of his explanation. " _The boys and I will be fine._ "

Somehow, Lalli doubted that they'd manage not to burn down the house without him there to keep a leash on them—but he was immensely grateful for Emil's support nevertheless.

The situation was getting more urgent by the hour—Lalli knew that. If he didn't find her, and soon, he was sure that she would be lost for good.

The hare wasn't sure where it was going, looping around or doubling back more often than not, leading him past places he'd already scouted. Still, Lalli followed it, because it was the only lead he had.

The hare sat up on its haunches. Its ears twitched. Then, it closed its eyes, and dissolved into thin air.

Lalli cursed.

The last three nights, it had ended like this: running towards nothing, staring at nothing, _finding_ nothing. Every night, she'd looked worse. Every night, the hare had stayed with him for a shorter time before it disappeared. He was running out of time.

Lalli wasn't going to give up.

One of these nights, he promised, he would find her. One of these nights, he would bring her home safe. Home to _who_ , though, was still an open question.

…Sonja, she'd said her name was. Now, Lalli whispered it, near-singing like one of his runos, even though he knew it wouldn't help him find her.

" _Hold on, Sonja,_ " he'd said during those last few hours of sleep, when she'd come to him yet again looking worse than ever before. " _Hold on for just a little bit longer. I promise, I'll come._ "

He _would_ find her. No matter how big this forest was, nothing could hide from a good scout. When—not _if_ —he did, he would be sure to do her justice.

He took off once again into the trees, searching tirelessly for some hint of a trail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't planning to do more in this universe, but then this thing popped into my head...


	7. A Girl Like You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seemed like a normal enough story. Country boy meets city girl. They hit it off, and something blossoms between them. What Reynir doesn't know, though, is that this whirlwind romance is not all that it seems... and by the time he realizes something is horribly wrong, it could easily be far too late...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Girl Like You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah5iepUs_t0)" by Edwyn Collins
> 
>  **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Prohibition Era)
> 
>  **Characters:** Reynir, Tuuri
> 
>  **Relationship:** Tuuri/Reynir (but please be warned, this is _not_ a happy or fluffy pairing), Reynir  & Hildur
> 
>  **Warnings:** Relationship abuse (including gaslighting, emotional manipulation, financial abuse, and coercion into illegal activities), villainization of a main character (most of what I said for the evil!Mikkel AU applies here as well), some implied alcohol abuse
> 
>  **Other Tags:** Manipulative!Tuuri, clueless!Reynir, strict religious upbringing messes everyone up, apologies to SectoBoss

The first time he saw her, he could honestly say he was nothing short of enchanted.

The city… it was his first time in the city. Finally, he was out of the harsh discipline and drudgery of a church-run orphanage, out of the constant sameness and the middle of nowhere… out, and completely overwhelmed.

The city had called to him, the glitz and the glamor, the bustle and noise, the bright lights, the fact that it never _stopped_. When Reynir had first arrived, he'd gotten more than a few knowing looks and jibes at the sight of his worn overalls, the dirt underneath his fingernails, and the fact that his mouth never closed because he was too busy gaping at everything.

"First time in Chicago, farm boy?"

"Looks like we've got ourselves a country mouse here!"

"Bet you've never seen anything like this before, eh? Eh?"

Reynir sighed; they were right. He had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

When he'd turned eighteen and finally been granted his freedom, his first thought had been to see his brothers and sisters again. They were siblings only in each other's hearts, not by blood, but the fact that they'd _chosen_ him only made it that much more special. The last time Hildur had visited, she'd implored him to come and find her once he was out.

…then, she'd been wearing furs and makeup, her dark hair shiny with whatever she'd sprayed into it. She'd looked perfect, like a movie star. Reynir looked at himself, at his callused fingers, untrimmed hair, and stained hand-me-downs.

He couldn't meet his sister looking like _this_.

A quick trip to the barber became a long trip to the barber, then a trip to get fitted for some nicer clothes, and an attempt to find his way in the dark had ended with him in some underground clubroom clutching his new clothes to his chest and wondering _what_ the waiter had just put in front of him.

…oh. Oh dear.

Speakeasy. He'd only ever heard of them in the vaguest, most condemning terms, when the nuns had told them that they were dens of sin and for the sake of their immortal souls they'd best not even _think_ of such things. Now, he'd somehow managed to wander straight into one.

Reynir gulped. He was clearly in over his head, but he didn't know what to do!

Should he call the police? But… what if they thought he was in on this, and arrested _him?_ Just turn around and leave? But he'd just gotten here; if he did that then everyone around him was going to _think_ he was going to the police, and Reynir didn't want to know what _they'd_ do to him.

…blend in. He just needed to spend a few minutes pretending that he belonged here. Stay long enough so as not to look suspicious… finish his drink, at least… after that, he could casually get up and casually make his way toward the exit…

The first sip was like liquid fire and smoke going down his throat, and Reynir's eyes bugged out as he coughed, splattering the contents of the glass all over his face. This… this was _horrible!_ He was never going to be able to pass for someone who knew what he was doing. He didn't even think he would be able to finish his _drink_. Much more slowly and cautiously, he took another sip, and though he managed not to spill anything this time, he still couldn't suppress a shudder at the taste.

…he needed to leave. Now. Maybe no one had noticed how much he didn't belong… maybe he'd manage to get out without looking too suspicious to those around him…

"Hi!"

Crap.

Slowly, Reynir looked up. The girl across from him at least _seemed_ friendly enough: she was smiling, and didn't look like she was about to hand him over to the mob. As a matter of fact she had a pretty _nice_ smile… not to mentions those lively blue eyes, fashionably short hair in a unique silvery color he'd never been before, and a short black dress that suggestively hugged her curves…

"H-hi." Reynir forced himself to move his gaze back up to her face. Even so, he could feel his own face turning red, and for the first time that night he was glad that it was so dark.

"Mind if I sit here?" Without waiting for an answer, she plopped into a chair across from him, and Reynir only remembered that _he_ should have pulled it out after she was already sitting. When he tried to stammer out an apology, she only giggled.

"First time in the city?"

Of _course_ she'd figured it out right away. "Erm… yes? But I didn't mean to—that is, I'm not here to do… anything… well, _anything_ , really! I'm just in town to visit my sister…"

"That's great! I come from a pretty small town too, but I had to get out of there, you know, it was just so _stifling_ , nobody would ever let me do anything, you just need to get used to things and then you'll learn to enjoy it, you'll see…"

Well, at least it didn't look like she was going to turn him in to any mob bosses. Nodding along to her chatter, Reynir leaned back in his chair and allowed the tension to go out of his muscles. Though he still wanted to get out of here, the sooner the better, his heart was no longer thudding against his ribcage with the urgency of it. He thought that he could spare a few minutes to have a friendly conversation.

As he talked with Tuuri (as her name turned out to be), Reynir slowly began to relax. This was okay. _She_ was okay. He might not have planned for any of this, but… there were certainly worse ways to spend his evening.

Maybe, he would think later, he had been _too_ trusting, had allowed himself to relax _too_ much. At the time, though, all he knew was that this pretty city girl was talking to him, and not judging him for his ignorance, and even the very little alcohol that he'd managed to get down had settled into a warm spot that was spreading through his stomach. Later, he'd learn what it felt like to _actually_ be drunk and realize that he'd been nowhere _near_ that point, but at the time, the unexpected and novel fuzziness in his head threw him off-balance and dulled his wits just enough to keep him from thinking about any of his decisions before he made them.

"I should probably get going," he said, once, and she cajoled him until he sat back down. Twice, and she said that the night was just starting, and where could he possibly be off to in such a hurry? Three times, and he gave up and decided to talk with her as long as she liked, because he _did_ like her, and one unplanned night of his time couldn't _possibly_ hurt. He had Hildur's address, and a phone number to call; now that he was on his own he could see his sister any time he wanted. Tuuri, though… he and Tuuri had run into each other purely by chance. Once he left this basement he might _never_ see Tuuri again.

Just as he'd thought, even this night could not last forever, even though his eyes were dry and scratchy and his wits dulled with alcohol and missed sleep alike by the time Tuuri indicated that _she_ wanted to leave. Reynir smiled, pushed out his chair, and followed her out of the filthy little hole at last.

The cool, (relatively) fresh night air was a blessed relief against his flushed face, and Reynir breathed a sigh of happiness. He'd come to the city and he'd had an adventure that he was sure he and Hildur would later have a good laugh about when he told her, but now, it was time for him to do what he'd come here to do.

"Hey, Tuuri?" He reached out to tap her shoulder as she was hailing a cab.

"Hm?" She turned to look at him with those enchanting blue eyes. "Is something the matter?"

"Not _really_." He _did_ know where he was going, just not how to get there—but hopefully a local would be able to help him out with that. He showed her the slip of paper. "I'm looking for this address; can you tell me where it is?"

"Oh…?" She stared at the paper for a few seconds before realization dawned on her face. " _Oh!_ Sure, I'll help you out!" Finally, she'd managed to hail a cab that was looking for a late fare, and dragged Reynir in before he could even voice a protest. The address she gave the driver, though, was not the one that he'd gotten from Hildur.

Of course—Tuuri had her own destination, and it had been generous of her to share a cab with him rather than leaving him to flounder around on his own. Reynir leaned back in his seat, reassuring himself that he _did_ have enough money to afford his half of the fare and then some; once Tuuri was safely at home, he'd have the driver take him to Hildur's. Briefly, he considered asking Tuuri to repeat her address so they'd be able to keep in touch (she was, after all, the only friend he'd made since he'd gotten here), but then wondered whether she might not think it weird that this person she'd only met a few hours ago wanted to know where she lived. Better not take the risk; he'd just have to be glad he'd met her, and leave it at that.

Eventually, the cab stopped, and Tuuri got out. Reynir was just about to wish her goodnight and be on his own way when she smiled at him through the still-open door.

"Well what are you waiting for? Come on!"

"Um… actually, I really need to get to—"

"Don't be silly!" She had him by the wrist, and Reynir decided that he'd better just go along with it rather than make a scene—it wasn't like he couldn't call another cab. "It's way too late to be calling on someone. You can stay the night at my place and then find that person you're looking for in the morning, okay?"

…maybe she was right. It _was_ pretty late, he wasn't even sure _how_ late, but the relative emptiness of the streets told him that it was late enough. Reynir hadn't wanted to meet his sister looking like some poor filthy farm kid; he wanted even less to wake her up in the middle of the night. Slowly, he nodded.

"Great!" Once the decision had been made, that was that—and, Reynir admitted as he followed her up the stairs to her apartment, spending more time with Tuuri was hardly a thing to complain about.

* * *

Okay, he _really_ needed to get in contact with his sister.

One night at Tuuri's had turned into a day, and a day had turned into a week. Of course Reynir had always been _planning_ to visit, or at least call, but… every single time he brought it up, it seemed, something always happened to get in the way.

Tuuri wanted to show him the city. _Hildur_ had promised to show him the city too, but… somehow, he knew that wouldn't have been the same. Sure, he'd been looking forward to seeing his sister again, and to enjoying each other's company just like old times but without the nuns constantly breathing down their necks, but… the thought of spending the day with Hildur didn't produce the same pleasant swooping sensation in his stomach that the thought of spending the day with Tuuri did. He had a pretty good idea of what it was, too.

 _Tomorrow_ , he'd thought guiltily on that first day, while he and Tuuri had sat in a diner and he'd been trying to reconcile the urgency of his promise with the butterflies that started flapping around in his stomach every time he saw Tuuri's smile. _If I haven't managed it by the end of the day, I'll call her tomorrow._

Of course, he hadn't followed through on that thought—nor had he done so on the next day, or the next after that. It seemed like Tuuri was always dragging him somewhere, and between the constant rushing around and the tiredness that followed Reynir just couldn't manage to find the time or the energy.

Hildur, he thought, would understand. After all, they'd never agreed on an _exact_ time for him to get in touch with her—just that he'd come see her at some point after he was on his own. He could afford to take his time.

That thought did little to quell the gnawing uneasiness that was slowly growing in the pit of his stomach.

Only part of his guilt was due to the ever-increasing span of time between his arrival in the city and the fulfillment of his still-unkept promise. There was also the matter of some of the things he'd been doing with Tuuri… both in and out of her bedroom…

" _Ah, don't worry too much about what they say,_ " Bjarni had reassured him once, after one of the nuns had given him a good smacking for asking about a word he'd heard from one of the older kids. " _The only reason they can afford to be so uptight is because they don't live in the real world—but trust me, if God wanted you to burn in Hell for half the things they said he did, then I don't know what he was thinking putting them on this earth in the first place._ "

Tuuri had told him much the same thing, when she'd first invited him into her bed—barely three days after they'd first met. "See, it's fine," she'd told him, patting the covers. "Don't be afraid of trying new things!"

It was the same thing she'd said the first time they'd kissed, the first time she'd put her tongue in his mouth, the first time she'd grabbed his hand and guided it under the hem of her dress. There was some truth in her words; nothing horrific had happened then either. So Reynir had figured that they'd already come this far; he might as well go all the way while he had the chance.

That first time, Reynir had absolutely no clue what he was doing. He shouldn't have worried, though: Tuuri proved once again to be an excellent and willing teacher, instructing him point by point on what she liked with no sign of impatience as to his ignorance, and before long she was screaming his name as her fingers raked down his back and her thighs wrapped around his torso.

Even so… even so, Reynir had found the act itself to be… underwhelming, and over the next few days he spent a lot of time wondering what was wrong with him. Of course, he knew what the nuns would have said… but then again he'd spent most of his childhood wanting nothing more than to get out of that place. He was a lot more worried when it occurred to him to wonder what _Hildur_ would have said. Would she tell him that he was an adult now, that it was his life and his choice? Or would she find his behavior completely disgusting?

Of course, his growing unease could have had something to do with the _other_ things that Tuuri had been introducing him to.

As it turned out, that he'd met her for the first time in a speakeasy hadn't been a coincidence. As a matter of fact, Tuuri frequented such establishments often… nearly every single night…

He'd have been bothered enough to know that his—sweetheart? Lover? Honestly he couldn't have said _what_ exactly she was to him—was doing something illegal. Then, she began to drag him along…

"No, really," he protested the first time she made herself up and insisted he put on his best clothes before telling him where they were going that night. "Actually I was in there entirely by accident… Not that I'm saying _you_ shouldn't go, I just don't really want to drink, and I'd kind of like to go to bed early tonight…" No matter what he said, though, his protests fell on deaf ears, and he found himself once again in a cramped, smelly, dark room with a glass of undrinkable poison in front of him.

This… this wasn't the same as the way he'd felt the first time they'd had sex. Whatever the nuns had said about the state of his immortal soul, the police couldn't burst in and arrest you for having sex. This, though… this was _illegal_. He might not be able to stop _Tuuri_ from doing it, but it was never something he'd wanted to be involved in himself. The problem was, though, he had no idea how to get out of it.

After some more weeks of this—he was quickly losing track of how much time had passed—Reynir found himself faced with yet _another_ problem.

"Sorry, Tuuri, I'd _like_ to come tonight" (he wouldn't, but he'd learned that actually _saying_ as much would do him the opposite of good), "but I'm nearly out of money. So why don't you just… ah… head out by yourself?"

"Oh, don't worry about it!" She grinned at him disarmingly. "I'll pay for both of us, just come and have fun!"

This… wasn't how things were supposed to go.

…Hildur. He _had_ to contact his sister; she'd know what to do. Though he no longer had enough money for a cab fare, she'd given him her phone number as well, and he could use Tuuri's phone to make the call. He didn't ask himself _why_ he thought it was so important to get up early and make the call while Tuuri was still asleep.

…he _thought_ he still had Hildur's number.

When Tuuri came out of the bedroom several hours after Reynir had woken, she blinked sleepy eyes at the state of the apartment after he'd ransacked it. Drawers had been emptied. Furniture had been moved and shoved haphazardly all around the floor. Clothes had been pulled from the laundry, their pockets turned out. No matter where he looked, though, the piece of paper with Hildur's address and phone number was nowhere to be found.

"Uh… Tuuri?" _Oh please no please no please no please…_ "That piece of paper? You know, the one I had when I got here? The one with an address and phone number on it? You… er… you wouldn't happen to know where it went?"

"Oh, that thing?" Tuuri yawned as she seated herself at the table (apparently not at all bothered by the fact that it was halfway across the room from its usual location) and poured herself some coffee. "I have no idea. Are you sure you didn't drop it somewhere while we were out?"

He was sure. He was so sure he would have bet his life on it. Due to the risk of it going through the wash (or, come to think of it, dropping it while he was out), he hadn't kept that piece of paper in his pocket since that first night he'd spent on Tuuri's couch. He'd set it safely atop the small table in the middle of the room… somewhere it wouldn't be at risk of getting spilled on or thrown out by mistake… somewhere he'd be able to _find_ it again…

Actually _saying_ any of that, though, would not do him any good, and he knew it. Instead, he slumped his shoulders and said only, "Never mind, that's okay," before pulling up his own chair at the table, defeated.

Why oh _why_ hadn't he done what he'd spent the past month and then some telling himself he needed to do, and contacted his sister from the start?

He'd just about made up his mind to contact the police—though what he was going to tell them, he didn't know—when Tuuri asked him a question out of nowhere while they sat at the breakfast table.

"You need money, right?"

"Um… yes?" Somehow, he had the feeling he _really_ wouldn't like where this was going.

"Great! I've got a friend who needs help with some of his work; I'll give him a call."

"Tuuri—wait!" She paused in mid-dial to look at him curiously; she already had the phone to her ear. "What… what _sort_ of work does he need me to do?"

"Oh, that's it?" She giggled. "Don't be worried about whether or not you can do it. He just needs someone strong to help him move stuff, that's all." She resumed dialing.

"Is it…" That feeling of dread was once again twisting the pit of his stomach. "Is it anything… you know… _illegal…_?"

"Don't be such a scaredy-cat!" Already he could hear the phone ringing on the other end. "You're not going to get caught! Besides, I can't afford to keep feeding you and letting you sleep here unless you're paying for some of the groceries, right? Oh, hey! I was hoping you would be home! Remember how you were looking for someone to help you out with the merchandise?"

While Tuuri chattered away to the person on the other end about how she'd found him a new assistant, Reynir returned to his place at the table, and slumped in his chair. One thing she'd said had been true: if he had no money, he had no options. He had nowhere to go, except to Hildur, and he had no idea where she was. If he left anyway, he wouldn't last long if he couldn't even afford a meal or a room for the night.

What was he going to _do?_

* * *

What he was going to do, as it turned out, was exactly what Tuuri told him to.

The first night, he found himself down amongst some abandoned warehouses well after sunset alongside a tough-looking man with a cigar in his mouth whose only opinion of Reynir seemed to be "Hm. Looks like a snitch."

He was more terrified that first night than he'd ever been in his _life_. Nevertheless, he kept his mouth shut, lifted whatever he was told to lift, moved whatever he was told to move, and took without complaint whatever insults and cruel jokes the group of much more hardened and better-armed men chose to subject him to. God, to him, had always been something the nuns had shoved down his throat rather than his own belief—but nevertheless, for the first time in his life he found himself praying in earnest that he would be good, he would forever swear off alcohol and sex and whatever else God wanted him to, just _please_ let him see another sunrise.

By the time he _did_ see that sunrise, he was so tired that he could barely remember his own name, let alone what that faint light on the horizon was supposed to mean. The men had a good laugh at how soft he was, before the ringleader threatened a painful retaliation if he even _thought_ about snitching, and sent him on his way.

"Wait!" he protested as he was marched to a car, the growing light and his own exhaustion granting him courage. "I thought you said you were going to pay me."

The boss shrugged. "Ask your woman. She made the deal, she gets to dole out your allowance."

Reynir's shoulders slumped. The more time he spent with Tuuri, it seemed, the more thoroughly he was trapped.

His "allowance", as it turned out, came only in the form of room and board—whenever he reminded her of her promise that he would be paid, she'd sit down at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and a pen in hand, cheerfully write down the salary that he'd earned that week, cheerfully add up her estimates of the expenses for feeding and housing him, and then cheerfully show him the difference. The result, as it turned out, was always a solid zero.

When he finally got desperate enough to try to steal it from her, he found that whatever she didn't have in the bank was kept in a solid lockbox to which Tuuri had the only key.

As he lay in bed late one night, hands blistered, limbs shaking with exhaustion, body limp from sex, and head spinning with alcohol, he brought his hands up to cover his face in an effort to keep himself from bursting out crying.

_What would his siblings do?_

Reynir had always been the baby among them. He'd never been imposing like Ólafur or levelheaded like Guðrún or quick-talking like Bjarni. And Hildur… Hildur might have been slender and delicate-looking, but she'd never let anyone push her around. He wasn't a fighter like Hildur and he didn't want to start a confrontation, but maybe… just maybe… he could try to emulate her boldness.

Tuuri was a heavy sleeper. Lately the work she'd had him doing had been keeping him up so late that he'd been forced to match his sleep schedule to hers, but Reynir was a country boy, and a morning person at heart. Even here, even now, rising with the sun was a habit he'd never quite managed to unlearn.

When he left, he donned his worn, patched hand-me-downs. The nice clothes he'd bought when he'd first come to the city, he bundled up and took with him as well. They were a bit worn themselves now, but… maybe they'd still be worth something, enough to get by. Whatever happened, it was still worth a try.

Tuuri's soft snores filled the apartment behind him as he slipped through the door and out into the morning sunlight.

* * *

When they found him, his fingers were blue with cold and his face was so numb he hadn't even noticed the cut on his forehead he'd gotten from breaking a bakery window in his desperation to get out of the cold and find something to _eat_.

When the police snapped the cuffs around his wrists, he didn't offer a fight. He was too glad for the warm car, and then for the warm meal that was served to him in his warm jail cell. Glad, too, that nobody lied to him about the position he was in.

The relief, however, was quickly followed by worry.

Tuuri, by now, would have been long aware that he was missing, and he was sure she would have known why. While Reynir didn't know the full extent of her connections in this city, from the few glimpses he'd gotten he could hazard a guess. Even jail might not be safe—and this time, he would not be able to run.

A day passed, then two, then three… then, against all odds, he heard a familiar voice outside of his cell.

"Oh my God… _Reynir?_ "

He looked up. There, standing on the other side of the bars with a hand over her mouth, was his sister.

"Hildur…" He pushed himself up, then realized how awful he must look: his hair a mess, his clothing in tatters… and that wasn't even including what he'd been _up_ to…

"I'm sorry!" His face was in his hands, and he wasn't sure how much longer he would be able to hold it together without breaking down crying. "Oh God, Hildur, I'm so sorry! I've been so stupid! I—"

"Reynir, slow down." He peeked out at her from between his fingers. At least she didn't look angry, only worried, and he could see that her hands were shaking slightly before she gripped the bars. "What happened?"

So he told her. He told her everything, starting from his arrival in the city: meeting Tuuri, the repeated delays in contacting Hildur, how Tuuri had subtly brought him under her sphere of influence, the loss of his money, the loss of Hildur's address and phone number, the alcohol, the sex, the illegal work he'd had no choice but to agree to, and finally his escape because he just couldn't _take_ it anymore…

Through it all, Hildur listened, and nodded, her face moving through a series of expressions ranging from sorrow to horror, but the disappointment and outrage he was waiting for never materialized. Instead, she reached through the bars to wrap her fingers around his as he talked.

"…I'm sorry," he finished at last, after the whole messy story had been wrung out of him. "I should have called you as soon as I got here. The stupid clothes could have waited… I should have known that just because I liked her…"

"Reynir." Hildur's fingers tightened around his. " _She_ should have helped you when she said she would. You never asked her to rob you and hold you captive." Her thumb brushed, once, across his knuckles. "It wasn't your fault."

"It doesn't matter whose fault it is." He pulled away, and took a step backwards into his jail cell. "That's not going to change the fact that I'm stuck here."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Raising his eyes from the floor, he saw that Hildur's face had hardened. "I'll bail you out, okay? Then we can talk about what to do next."

Relief swept through him, followed by an unexpected jolt of panic in his stomach. "Hildur—wait! I can't—" He shivered. "I can't testify against them. They'll kill me. Please…?"

"I think that you _should_. They deserve to go to jail, the whole lot of them." Her eyes, however, had softened. "But that's your decision, and no one else's." She said nothing more as she walked away.

Later, wrapped into a warm car with a fresh set of clothes—worn and out of fashion, but oh so comfortable—with snow falling softly outside the windows and his sister seated behind the wheel, Reynir let out a sigh of relief.

"So," Hildur began as the engine roared to life, tightening her gloved hands over the wheel. "What do you want to do now?"

She didn't seem to understand when that simple question brought tears to his eyes. It took _Reynir_ a moment to realize that he couldn't even remember the last time anyone had asked him what it was that _he_ wanted.

"Home," he said, softly, staring at the blanket of white that had settled over the city—lending it an uncharacteristic air of peace, like a remote country silence. "I just want to go home."

Hildur nodded, and reached for the gearshift. Before long, the car was lost behind thick sheets of falling snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently after writing evil!Mikkel, my brain decided that the only way to make this fair would be to do a villain AU for each of the main characters. Seriously, _why?_
> 
> When I was listening to that song, the first thing I thought (well, after '"Days of yore"? Who even _uses_ that phrase?') was that the singer... doesn't actually sound like he's enjoying himself. And then things... happened... and I came out with this.


	8. A Horse with No Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life isn't fair. Sigrun knows this. Still, it can be hard to accept when the only help you can get is no help at all, and is only offered after it's far too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Horse with No Name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2naehMUQpQY)" by America
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Western)
> 
> **Continuity:** Prequel to [Blaze of Glory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/21142538) and [Running to Stand Still](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/23001240)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun
> 
> **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Trond
> 
> **Warnings:** Gruesome character death, murder, suicidal thoughts
> 
> **Other Tags:** Deal with the devil, tragic revenge story

" _I told you I'd give you what you needed, not that I'd do your work for you. You want to find him, you can find him on your own. He went south—and that's all the free information you'll get from me._ "

Sigrun scowled. It figured the old man would be a dirty cheat.

Still, he had given her exactly what he'd said he would—a gun, bullets, food and water. Clothing. Tack. A horse.

When the Old Man had first told her he'd give her a horse, part of her had been expecting something a bit more… unusual, something that made it clear what he was. A coal-black steed, maybe, with glowing red eyes and fire coming out of its nose. While the brown gelding he'd handed her instead was indeed a good horse, Sigrun still felt ill at ease atop its back, maybe because it was a bit _too_ ordinary.

Now, it was just the two of them out in the desert.

* * *

Sigrun did not worry about traveling alone, nor about what she was going to do for food or water. No matter how much she drank, her waterskin was never empty; no matter how many times she dug into her saddlebags, there was always a strip of jerky and a piece of bread or cheese to be found.

…no matter how long she rode, the horse never tired.

It was good, at least, to be alone: alone, free from the stares and the hostility and the lack of _help_. Here, there was only sunshine and animals and a blue, blue sky, and Sigrun was finally beginning to feel like herself.

After several hours on her first day, she noticed a persistent burning heat on her face and the back of her neck. Looking at the backs of her unprotected hands, she found them covered by a rash of tiny red bumps.

_Their people weren't made for bright sun and dusty plains, her father had said. They were made for cold, cold winters and icy mountains and fjords and sea. When she'd asked why they'd left those places, then, her mother had only smiled and taken her aside and said that they'd needed to, and they'd explain it when she was older, and that someday, she'd understand._

* * *

Late at night, sitting by her fire, Sigrun wondered what would happen if she died out here.

Going thirsty or hungry wasn't likely, but if her horse threw her or she ended up on the wrong end of a rattlesnake before she got to put a bullet through his heart, that meant the Old Man won't have upheld his end of the bargain, and he wouldn't be able to collect her when the time came. Once or twice, she seriously considered it, when she heard a telltale rattle off down some gulch or saw the shadow of a vulture circling overhead. Each time, though, she shook her head, re-mounted her horse, and walked away.

The Old Man was used to cheaters, she was sure, and Sigrun wasn't clever enough to cheat and get away with it. So she was pretty sure that rattlesnake bite wouldn't kill her; no, she'd only end up writhing in pain on the ground for the better part of a week, and there'd be a week of her life wasted that she could have spent tracking him down. Even if she took out the gun, and put the barrel in her mouth, and pulled the trigger, he'd find some way to keep her alive until she did what she'd traded for, she was sure. She'd heard enough stories to know he always got his way in the end, and he'd have her for suicide just as surely as for her bargain.

What _really_ stopped her, though, was that even on the off-chance that she succeeded, she still would have died for nothing. She didn't know how much time she had left as was, and she knew that that time would be up as soon as she found him, but… if she could find him, at least she could die in the knowledge that she'd accomplished _something_.

_The heat in her face did not go away when she tried to sleep at night._

_That she'd been caught outside when the flames went up was either good luck or bad. By the time she'd seen the light and run back as fast as her legs would carry her, the house was already up in flames, the walls caving in and the roof an open blaze against the night._

_"Mamma!" she yelled, her voice hoarse from more than just smoke. "Pappa! MAMMA!"_

_No matter how long or how loudly she screamed, though, no one answered._

* * *

The people she'd asked had told her of the towns in that direction, and how far she'd have to ride to find them. What she'd do when she got there, though… well, honestly she had no idea.

Her memory showed her only a shadow; even his voice had been indistinct before the backdrop of crackling flames. He was not a monster; even he would not kill a child. That she'd have soon died of starvation with no property to her name and no means to find work, he didn't seem to care.

So, she didn't plan, only rode in his general direction. He probably wouldn't be hard to find, once she did find him: someone who killed for hire or spite probably wouldn't be living on the down-low.

When she finally did make it to the first grubby town, seized by a sudden fit of boldness, she let the horse go.

Sigrun had to admit she felt just a little bit stupid as she watched it gallop off, its empty bridle hanging in her hand and the empty saddle on the ground at her feet. Still, it was too late to change things, so she shrugged and left the tack where it had fallen before continuing on foot.

She stayed there for several days. Once again, she didn't have to worry: though her saddlebags were no longer with her, when she put her hand in her pocket she always found money. Not a lot—never enough to gamble or to treat herself to anything fancy—but enough for a meal and a place to sleep.

It was no use. He hadn't come through town— _no one_ looking for trouble had come through town recently. Sigrun wasn't going to find him here.

Briefly, she considered staying, to rest and to spend some time healing from the loss she had yet to truly mourn. Without even needing to check, however, she knew that if she did that she would find no money in her pocket, no means to pay her way. Maybe, if she asked around a bit… most farmers were willing to trade a warm bed and a few good meals in return for help bringing in the harvest… maybe one of the shopkeepers could use an extra pair of hands…

Shaking her head, she let the idea die a quiet death. She had already chosen her path, and now there was nothing to do but follow it.

When Sigrun left the town, she went on foot—only to find the horse the Old Man had given her waiting for her on the outskirts of the town, fully saddled, switching its tail patiently in the still desert heat.

She had no idea at first why that sight made her so _angry—_ if not for the horse, after all, she'd have been forced to cross the desert on foot. Still, knowing this did not stop her from marching up to the animal, grabbing it by the bridle, and yanking its head down so it was on the level with her, so she could look it straight in the eyes.

No matter how deeply she looked, no smoldering red coals gazed back at her from out of those depths—only the dark brown and black pools she'd become accustomed to seeing on any animal, with just the tiniest bit of white beginning to show of an animal in distress. They were absolutely no different from the eyes of any other horse she'd ever seen in her life.

An ordinary horse…

A _horse!_ Sigrun was sure that she could lead this horse out into the desert and put a bullet right between its eyes, and find it waiting patiently by her side the very next day, all saddled up and ready to go. It would always be the same horse, too: a horse that never aged… that never tired… that, for as long as Sigrun had need of it, would never, ever die…

It just wasn't _fair!_

All at once, the fight went out of her, leaving her limp and weak. She wanted to cry, but couldn't. Instead, she leaned her face against the horse's soft nose, and allowed her hands to rest on either side of its neck.

For a moment, just a moment, she allowed herself to remember. Salty spray, wind in her hair, rolling planks beneath her feet, the fresh scent of the ocean breeze… they were people of the sea too, her father had said…

…but it wasn't doing her any good to sit here and cry. The past was past; the most she could hope for now was blood for blood. So, Sigrun mounted her horse, and rode off in search of the next town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I heard that America got some criticism for the phrasing of their lyrics, but then when I actually listened to the song, turns of phrase like "plants and birds and rocks and things" and "the heat was hot" sound exactly like something that Sigrun would say - that, and after studying some Norwegian, "for to give you no pain" actually is a turn of phrase I could see being used by a native Norwegian speaker who was fairly new to English. So the surrealism-induced lyrics actually worked quite well for this story.


	9. An Innocent Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both of them have seen far too much death in their lifetimes. Now, it's time to start learning to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[An Innocent Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H23tUK3z17U)" by Billy Joel
> 
> **Setting:** Post-mission
> 
> **Continuity:** Sequel to Aliax's story [Dry Eyes](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6438292/chapters/23154597?view_adult=true), which is a sequel to my story [Keeping a Secret](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6424975/chapters/15848443)
> 
> **Characters:** Emil
> 
> **Relationship:** Subtle/pre-romance Emil/Onni
> 
> **Warnings:** Multiple past character deaths, brief descriptions of gore, nonsexual nudity
> 
> **Other Tags:** Grief/mourning, PTSD, emotional H/C, slow burn, it's Aliax's fault

"Tuuri always did want to go on an adventure."

The conversations were spontaneous, always. There had never been a point where either one of them said "Let's sit down and talk about our feelings." Instead, they simply said what they needed to say, when they needed to say it: as they walked home after their shifts, over the dinner table when the meal was long finished but neither of them felt ready to get up, or those late nights when they both found themselves sitting in a common room lit only by moonlight because neither one of them had been able to sleep.

Emil did not speak, only nodded. Even a few weeks of traveling with Tuuri had taught him quite well about her longing for excitement and discovery, but he said nothing of her neverending exhilaration or how she'd held onto her upbeat cheerfulness right up until the very end, even though he was sure that Onni would want to hear it someday. Right now, it was Onni's turn to talk.

"Back in Saimaa, it was all I could do to keep her out of trouble." Onni smiled and wiped his eyes; Emil smiled and nodded along, even though he could already feel a prickling behind his own eyelids; he could just picture little Tuuri running all over the island sticking her head into every dark corner she could find trying to see a troll, with a panting Onni always one step behind her.

"I thought that when we made it to Keuruu, she'd finally be safe. For a while, she was." He shook his head slightly, the smile now gone. "But there was one thing I didn't count on."

"What's that?" Emil asked—not because he didn't already know the answer, but because he knew that Onni needed to know there was still someone who wanted to hear what he needed to say.

"That she'd grow up." Once again, it was so easy to picture: the years slipping by as Onni settled into his new routine and hoped that Tuuri had settled into hers, the increasing bouts of defiance that every child and teenager went through as she tested her independence, until one day…

"…she made her own decision, and I no longer had the power to command her otherwise. Gods know I begged and pleaded—but she had already made up her mind. She always did."

* * *

Onni, of course, returned the favor when Emil needed to talk about what _he'd_ experienced out in the Silent World.

There was often no reason for him to do so. Of course he wanted to hear everything he could about Lalli and Tuuri… but he hadn't known Sigrun (the first officer Emil had served under who'd treated him like a person rather than a burden) or Reynir (who'd bravely pushed himself through those weeks of uncertainty and illness so that Emil might live), yet he listened to Emil's accounts of them anyway, quietly, steadily. He even honored Reynir's bravery when Emil told him how he'd ended it: eyes open, choosing his own end with quiet courage and dignity.

"What was between you and Lalli?" Onni asked one day.

Emil opened his mouth—closed it again, and struggled with what to say. The question had not been hostile or challenging. If anything, there was… desperation, of a sort that Emil couldn't place.

This man had been the only family that Lalli had had left. Emil thought he owed him as honest an answer as he was able to give.

"…I don't know," he confessed at last, after a few minutes of struggle.

"There was a connection," he continued, still trying to explain the unexplainable, the thing that had always existed between them and for which they'd never needed such a clumsy thing as language. "I don't know what it was. We understood each other, even though we didn't have words. He always seemed to know when I needed help. It wasn't just what we were, though, but what we _could_ have been… I know that I'm not making any sense."

Nevertheless, Onni was nodding, as if what he'd said had made perfect sense indeed.

Emil was sure he hadn't imagined the smile on his face.

* * *

The first time someone invited him to a sauna, he balked.

Emil had never had an issue with nudity before. The barracks in the Cleansers hadn't exactly been private, and he'd changed into his uniform in the morning and peeled it off again at night without a second thought. Nor had privacy been a commodity on the mission, where they'd all bathed outside in the cold, in plain sight of anyone who happened to walk by. All of that had been Before, though—before Emil had had to endure the constant whispers and the constant stares at his scars.

His first time showering in a public space after he'd left the hospital in Sweden, he'd been subjected to a constant barrage of whispers and stares. Norway had been worse; they'd seemed to think he had something to be proud of. The deep claw stripes on his back, on his side… there must be a story, for him to have survived a blow like that.

…there was a story. It just wasn't one Emil could celebrate.

Onni didn't ask why. _He_ knew, at least, that the last person to know the significance of those scars was the man who had stitched them up while they were still gaping wounds. So he only shrugged, said "Suit yourself," and let the matter drop.

* * *

No matter how much time had passed, he still woke screaming in the middle of the night.

Sometimes, there were only mere fragments left in his head: the scent of blood, a pair of unblinking eyes, a lingering scream on the air, the taste of copper in his mouth. Other times, though, they were remarkably vivid, and he re-lived those horrible weeks again and again in his sleep, his mind reconstructing in loving detail even the things he hadn't seen, or hadn't been able to remember… the way Sigrun's eye had been torn halfway out of her skull when the troll had ripped into her… a slight widening of Reynir's eyes as the bullet had hit him, and the brief look of betrayal that had flashed across his face…

Emil jolted out of bed, hands pressed to his mouth from long practice, a prickling already burning behind his eyes as he crashed to the floor. Then, he was on his hands and knees, stomach heaving, a thin stream of bile crawling up his throat and welling out of his mouth.

Even after there was no longer anything left to bring up, his stomach continued clenching spasmodically, so he stayed there on the hard floorboards, until finally, gradually, it stopped. Breathing in harsh breaths, Emil pushed himself to his feet with shaking hands (his knees cried out in protest) and staggered out in search of a mop and a glass of water—he would get no more sleep tonight.

By the time he had finished scrubbing the floor, his eyelids had grown heavy but his hands were still trembling, and he still did not dare to go back to bed. So Emil took his glass of water outside, where he first took a brief pull, swished it around inside of his mouth, and spat. Even that failed to completely wash away the lingering taste of vomit.

The night air of Finland was frigid against his face, cooling the feverish intensity of his nightmares. He took it in in a series of great gulps, breathing in the clean scent of snow and pine forest, reminding himself that this, this was reality, this was now, not the sharp twang of antiseptic and the lingering putrid rot of infection from his memories. He rinsed his mouth one more time before taking an actual swallow, the water so cold in his throat it nearly burned as it sent shivers through his core.

Something moved in the moonlight.

With a gasp, he let the water glass slip from his fingers, his hand instead grasping for a dagger that wasn't there—but no, it was only Onni, blinking at him in surprise under the light of the full moon.

They exchanged no words. Onni knew full well why Emil was not in his bed; offering an explanation for the obvious would have been banal and unhelpful. Instead, they simply nodded at each other, before Emil knelt to pick up the broken glass.

* * *

The next day, Onni handed him a towel.

"It will help," was all he said when Emil looked up at him with panic in his eyes. "You don't need to worry. The sauna is a sacred place."

He spent the next several minutes staring first at the towel, then at the door.

Onni wouldn't force him, he knew. It was his choice, a choice between which one he dreaded more: exposing his body, or the thought of facing yet more nightmares the next time he tried to sleep…

The nightmares won.

The heat hit him like a physical blow when he first stepped inside. At first, he'd self-consciously wrapped the towel around himself to cover the worst of the marks on his back and side, but marginally relaxed when he saw that there was no one else in there, only Onni.

He let the towel drop.

Onni's eyes did not slide off of him, as if his scars were shameful even to look at, but neither did his gaze linger. Instead, he simply nodded in acknowledgement, and gestured Emil to a spot where the heat was not so intense.

Emil had no idea how long they stayed in there. He only knew that the heat was soothing against the ache of old scars and new tension alike, and the presence of a friend an equal balm for his lingering panic and heartsickness. After an interminable amount of time, Onni began to sing.

It was barely noticeable at first, a quiet hum deep in his throat. Gradually, though, it increased in volume, growing ever deeper and more resonant without ever getting truly _loud_ , and Emil leaned into the sound as he'd once leaned into the arms of a mother, a father, until eventually he found himself joining in, following along with his own thready hum even though the words of the tune completely eluded him.

"Thank you," he said, after, when they'd finally come outside and were quenching themselves with snow.

In response, Onni shook his head. "I was about to say the same to you."

* * *

Holidays, on this base, were rare. The trolls, after all, kept no calendars, and weren't likely to ask whether the day was a sacred one before testing the wards or breaching the walls. Keuruu was one of the only safe places in Finland—to keep it that way, they had to be ready.

Emil couldn't say that he minded. After all, if his team had been more alert, better supplied, better prepared, they might never have ended up in the disaster they had. It was amazing how many of their failures could be traced back to them running out of food, and Emil had never quite forgiven his uncle for having allowed them to go out there with little more for sustenance than dirt and candle wax. Finland might have been poor, and primitive, but Keuruu at least spared no expense when it came to keeping its people safe. Emil could live with that, even if it did mean giving up some of the comforts and leisure time he'd previously taken for granted.

…that still didn't mean he was okay with Onni spending his holidays all alone.

Kitty fell into step beside him as he crunched his way through the snow to Onni's living quarters, only one door away from his. When he'd brought her to Keuruu with him, the Finnish military had immediately snatched her up for training, and he hadn't seen much of her during that first year, but now that she'd earned her Grade A collar, she made sure to stop by every now and then to make sure Emil hadn't forgotten her. After all, she knew who'd slip her tuna under the table when no one else was looking.

Emil smiled as he let his hand dangle at his waist, until the tip of her fluffy tail brushed against his fingertips without him having to strain at all. She had gotten so big; not at all the tiny half-drowned kitten who'd fit snugly in the palm of his hand when he'd first pulled her out of a hole in the wall. That effort, at least, hadn't been in vain.

"Actually, maybe you could help me," he said as he knelt down to scritch under her chin. "Would you like that?"

In response, a low rumble went through her body, more vibration than sound, and Emil smiled as she purred. "I'll take that as a yes."

His knock was answered with a grunt that he took as an invitation; the door, when he tried it, was unlocked. Pushing it open, he found Onni, by himself, not eating or celebrating but kneeling on the floor. Before him was a picture in a frame: himself, sad-eyed, a much younger Tuuri and Lalli to either side, bracketed on each side by two burning candles.

The smile faded from Emil's face as he stood in the doorway. He'd come here intending to do something nice for Onni, help him enjoy himself for once, but any attempt at cheering him up now would have been little better than a slap in the face. Still, Onni had not turned him away when he'd knocked. There had to be something Emil could do.

…there was.

Kitty was already rubbing her body against Onni's side, still purring, her head bumping up against his hand. Absently, as if he wasn't even aware of what he was doing, he reached over to scoop her into his lap, where he held her, face buried in her fur as tears streamed down his face.

Emil walked into the room and kicked off his boots, closing the door softly behind him. Without speaking, he walked over to kneel beside Onni, and quietly rested a hand on his shoulder.

The three of them stayed like that well into the night.

* * *

The first time Onni touched _him_ , it was unexpected to both of them.

Finns didn't touch. Emil had learned this early after he'd come to Keuruu: Lalli had been the exception, not the rule. From what Onni had said about his cousin, Emil had been Lalli's exception as well.

Onni, it seemed, no longer had exceptions.

Emil knew, by now, what had happened to his family. Knowing that, and having witnessed Tuuri and Lalli's fate, it was hard to blame him for not wanting to get close to anyone ever again. It still made Emil's chest hurt to see how much he was isolating himself (never mind that Emil had been doing the exact same thing, for the exact same reasons, for the past two and a half years).

…but of course, he could say none of this to Onni, and he could not fill that gap his family had left behind. He could only try to do whatever was possible to reach out, and hope that his efforts were met with a response.

Sometimes, in trying to help Onni, he managed to forget that _he_ needed comfort and reassurance just as much as Onni did.

"'r you doing here?" He stared out into the dark night, bleary-eyed and cold, still too groggy with too many accumulated nights of missed sleep to comprehend the stocky shadow that was currently standing in his doorway, arms crossed.

"I could hear you screaming through the walls."

"Oh." That… Emil blinked. He must have been having a really bad week. "Sorry I woke you up." He yawned, turned, and began to shuffle his way back to the bedroom—there'd be no getting back to sleep after this, but maybe he could get some housecleaning done…

"Wait."

He was so woozy that if not for the hand on his shoulder, he might not even have acknowledged the voice. Once again, he turned around, blinked, and mumbled something about "not going back to bed, don't worry."

Onni huffed. "That's exactly the problem. Come on."

He was too tired to fight when he found himself being steered out the door, a blanket around his shoulders. "What are you—doing?" he repeated instead, working the words around a yawn.

"Making sure that you sleep."

_That_ cut through his brain fog, enough for him to jerk back. "Wait—Onni, no!" The other man looked surprised, but let him pull away, and then stand a few paces away, shivering in the cold.

"You need to sleep," he repeated. His voice was a rock, quietly insistent. Emil knew he could struggle and flail and beat against it as much as he wanted, yet never wear it down. So he gave up fighting, and pleaded instead, because surely if Onni knew _why…_

"If I sleep, I'm just going to go back to _that_." His shaking, by this point, was from more than the cold.

"You think that I haven't?" He held out a hand. "You're not doing yourself any favors this way."

Emil was too terrified to sleep, but he was also too tired to fight. So he let Onni lead him back to his quarters and then to his bed, where he was all but ordered to get under the covers before he made himself sick.

"Why aren't _you_ sleeping?" he protested, weakly, one last time as he curled into the spot of warmth that still lingered between the sheets.

"I work a different shift, remember? Get your own rest."

Much as Emil tried to fight it, it was impossible _not_ to drift off when he was lying down, under warm covers, and with a reassuring presence next to him in the room. Still, his fears had not been unjustified, as the memories of those last days in the Silent World began almost immediately to filter through his sleep. And yet…

Whenever the nightmares started to become too much, with sleep carrying him away from when and where he was, a warm solid pressure on his back and a low rhythmic sound would intervene and bring him back to reality, not enough to wake him but just enough to allow him to drift away into more peaceful, restful sleep. It was only after several nights of this, when he'd woken and was clear-headed enough to actually _think_ about it, that he realized Onni had calmed him by gently rubbing his back whenever he began to thrash around, his voice a low reverberant hum to let Emil know that he was still there.

Onni denied everything.

* * *

It took them some time, but eventually they both managed to learn that the other was not going away.

Lalli had left him, and Sigrun, and Mikkel, and Tuuri—none of them by their own choice, but they were still gone for good. Reynir _had_ had a choice, but it had been a choice between a peaceful rest and a torturous death or worse; Emil could not blame him for taking it, however hard it had been on him to carry it out.

Onni, meanwhile, had lost most of his family—and then the rest of them had followed, in spite of his best efforts to protect them from just such a fate. Somewhere in the midst of that sea of grief, he had managed to convince himself that no one he loved would ever be safe from the curse that haunted his family.

Still, no matter how many years had passed, Emil had not succumbed, and Onni was still by his side.

To trust that it would stay that way might have been foolish. If being a fool meant truly living rather than stumbling through every day in a state of waking death, though, it was a price that they would both gladly pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to make this into a more overt romance, but in the end, the story wanted to stay subtle.


	10. A Journey in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've made an incredible journey... but such a journey is not without its perils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** [A Journey in the Dark](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckiWKsDxDns) by Howard Shore
> 
> **Setting:** Canon compliant
> 
> **Warnings:** Nothing worse than canon
> 
> **Other tags:** A really short short, LotR soundtrack without an LotR crossover, what is the world coming to?

Before, they had been nothing more than aimlessly drifting individuals, doing whatever was necessary to survive and to get along in the world, but doing so aimlessly, without any true purpose. Before, they had merely _existed…_ but their existence had served nothing.

Then, though, something happened to bring them together: a goal, a journey. Some of them had jumped in eagerly. Others had joined unwilling, and only after being dragged and pushed along. By the end, though, they had gone from a collection of largely dysfunctional individuals to a functioning team with a singular purpose. No matter their varying natures and inclinations, no matter what they were or weren't susceptible to, by the time they reached the end of their journey, none of them regretted having come along.

This is not to say that their journey was easy. They ran into a multitude of snags and difficulties—impossible not to, when one can only safely move half of the time. They had multiple encounters (some of them near-deadly) with hostile entities (some of them heretofore completely unknown). Still, they prevailed even if they didn't always _win_ , and picked themselves up, and lived to fight again.

Even through the battle that nearly killed them all…

Their losses in that battle were not trivial. They'd lost their mobility. Worse, the strain of fighting had finally begun to tell on their leader, who'd been badly hurt and soon could barely even walk unaided. What purpose they'd gained was now shattered to pieces on the ground, and the only hope they had left was of escaping with their lives.

Still, however, they _would_ persevere. This was _their_ world, and they were not about to lose it to a savage invasion that killed them mercilessly. They might not have known what these soft pale creatures in their mysterious metal box were doing invading their lands, but the fact remained that these were _their_ lands; they had mobilized once, and they could do so again.

They had lost—but they would never, ever give up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It just didn't want to be any longer...


	11. A Knife in the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some dying things cannot be saved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Knife in the Ocean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-n4U2KZZVs)" by Foals
> 
> **Setting:** Prologue era
> 
> **Characters:** Ensi
> 
> **Relationship:** Ensi  & the prologue Hotakainens
> 
> **Warnings:** Character death
> 
> **Other Tags:** Generational differences, transitions, cultural death, more melancholy

In her parents' time, she was told, the world had been _different_.

Mother told her of amazing medicines that could make a sick person feel better within minutes. Father talked about massive cities packed with people. Aunt Kaino whispered of machines that could move hundreds of people from one side of the world to the other in barely half a day. Even Cousin Veeti—who was older than she was, old enough that he'd been born Before and could remember some things from the Old World—told her tales of amazing pictures that moved, and played sound and told stories, and sometimes even let you control them so they could tell the stories that _you_ wanted.

That last bit, Ensi had always been pretty sure was Cousin Veeti making things up—but then Uncle Eino told her that no, such things really did exist, and even showed her a small rectangular object, black and inert, that he claimed had once sprung to life at the tap of a finger. So either they were both yanking her chain, or it was all true, and the world her parents had lived in really _had_ been so technologically advanced that it was simply beyond her comprehension.

When Ensi was young, she thought that it didn't matter. After all, not even a picture that moved and talked could compare to the real, living land she saw in her dreams each night, and no one else in her family seemed to understand _that_.

Then, she got older—and so did her parents.

They hadn't always understood each other—the gap between the world they remembered and the one they lived in now was just that large. Still, it wasn't until she had children of her own and was watching them grow up in a world they considered perfectly normal—something Ensi, thanks to her family's stories and the massive differences between their experiences and hers, had never quite been able to do—did she begin to consider the knowledge as a _loss_.

"Somehow, I never stopped believing that if we only survived long enough, everything was going to go back to the way it used to be."

Ensi said nothing. She had never been one for outpourings of emotion, and when her mother made a statement like that on her deathbed, she had no idea how on Earth she was expected to respond. In a situation like this, she had long since learned, silence was safer.

"But that's never going to happen." Her mother squeezed her eyes closed, even going so far as to turn her head away as if what she was about to say was too painful for her to look at Ensi while saying it. "Is it?"

"No," Ensi replied: bluntly, honestly. "It isn't."

Her mother let out a long breath. "Then we'll be the last ones who remember. That world will die with us."

There _really_ was nothing Ensi could say to that, so once again, she didn't.

"Sometimes, I hoped that _your_ generation would keep those memories alive, but… no. That wouldn't be fair."

Fair… Ensi spent so much of her time simply trying to _survive—_ not only her, but her community, her children… No, she could not spare the time nor the energy to pass down fantasies of a world that was never coming back.

"Still," her mother whispered with tears running down her face, her final departing words, "still, I wish…"

Her family hadn't always been supportive of _her_ understanding of the world either. To them, hearing the screams of the infected had been a metaphor, an exaggerated statement of fear; a song was only a song and dreams were only dreams. Overall, there was very little room for understanding in the transition from the old world to the new.

Pictures that moved and talked… machines that could fly to lands that were now nothing more than a distant dream… there was no longer room in the world for such things.

Ensi stepped into the water. Her eyes began to glow, and she raised her voice in song.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This song caught my ear right away, and all I can say is that it is _haunting_.


	12. A Light that Never Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun has chosen her destiny, and she has no regrets. Sometimes, the best rewards go to those who expect none.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Light That Never Comes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHo29kD9Go)" by Linkin Park
> 
>  **Continuity:** Something of a spiritual successor to [Million Dollar Business](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22685417), but can stand alone
> 
>  **Setting:** Post-mission/Afterlife
> 
>  **Characters:** Sigrun
> 
>  **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Thor (yeah, you read that right)
> 
>  **Warnings:** Erm... well, it's an afterlife fic and the character's already dead, so I _guess_ major character death?
> 
>  **Other Tags:** Norse mythology, tests of strength

This was real.

This—the wind in her hair, the scent of horse beneath her, the woman around whose waist she was currently wrapping her arms. This—the thick black smoke rising into the air from her own funeral pyre beneath them.

This—this was _her_ people's legend. Sigrun might have thought that she'd have to live up to it, but… well, she'd already done that part, now hadn't she?

If she hadn't, she never would have been here.

* * *

This was real.

This—the strain in her muscles, the sting of her wounds, the sturdy grasp of the weapons in her hands. Now, she trained alongside not only old friends, but legendary Old World heroes. Now, she feasted and drank at the feet of the gods.

* * *

Sigrun had been born to be a warrior. She could not have been satisfied with any other life, nor would she have been content with an afterlife eternally sleeping like the Finns did—or, even worse, with an eternity of sitting around doing _nothing_ like that Old World religion their mages had encountered, and which she was pretty sure had died out for good reason.

Even so, she'd known all along that even this was not _truly_ the end.

Something was coming, they all knew it. They knew it every time they felt the ground shake underneath their feet, shakes that grew ever more frequent and forceful as time passed on. They knew it when they looked to the thrashing sea, and thought they saw a glimpse of scales underneath the waves. Even as their ranks swelled, it was more important than ever that they be prepared.

* * *

The gods were merciless in their training.

Of course, Sigrun had known all along what she was signing on for. She'd known it when she had first enlisted at thirteen, and she'd known it again when she'd reached up to grab the armor-clad woman's offered hand. Rough training, pitched battles, a violent end… she would die and die again as she had lived, and yet her eventual bloody fate was not destiny, but a choice.

Her arms shook whenever she locked swords with some of her fellow _einherjar_ , the older ones who'd been here since before the Rash, since a time that even the Old World had known as ancient history, and had already had countless lifetimes to practice. In life, Sigrun had eventually earned herself a plenty respectable title, but even "General" was meaningless when nearly everyone else around you answered to it as well. In her own time, Sigrun had become a legendary warrior, but now it was back to basic all over again.

Didn't matter. You did what you had to do, and when stuff got too easy that was when it got boring.

Some, Sigrun knew, were chosen _by_ the gods: mages and seers; Freyja especially had her favorites, those she'd marked from birth for reasons known only to her. Personally, Sigrun liked it better this way: when her devotion was never in doubt because she'd given it freely.

In giving, she had never expected much in return. Protection from the worst of the Silent World threats. A place to go after she died. Most of all, though, she had craved an opportunity to do what she loved—and she had made it, then and now. All in all, Sigrun was content.

As far as she was concerned, it wasn't worth much unless you had to _work_ for it.

If you got good enough, sometimes your reward was to work even harder.

When the _einherjar_ trained, she had sometimes noticed a man, red-haired and tall, circling around the edges of their ranks. Sometimes, when those especially dedicated stayed out later than they had to to further hone their skills, she'd even seen him approach one person or another, their forms mere silhouettes in the dying light. Sigrun, though she noted his presence, always kept at what she was doing; she would not allow herself to be distracted, and she already knew who he was.

If you thought you were something special, Uncle Trond always said to the new recruits on their first day of basic, you could get that silly notion out of your head right now—or they could beat it out of you, he really didn't care. This was the military, not a daycare, and if you wanted favor you'd better be ready to _earn_ it.

Then came the evening when she swung her sword, only for sparks to fly in resistance as steel met steel.

Without breaking her stance, she turned to look with narrowed eyes. Sure enough, he was there, sword arm up and locked with hers, eyes flashing her an invitation in the light of the setting sun.

"Show me."

When he dropped the hammer to the ground beside him, roiling stormclouds covered the skies.

When they crossed blades again, the rain was coming down in sluicing sheets. Within minutes Sigrun's hair was plastered to her head and her clothes to her body; she was unable to take a firm stance without her feet sliding all over the place in the mud.

…this was hardly the first time she'd fought in mud, in the rain, with thunder and lightning coming down all around her. You didn't think about what would happen to you if you stayed out in this rain for _too_ long, with no fire or shelter or means to warm yourself back up after the battle-heat had worn off. You didn't think about what could happen to you if lightning chose to strike while you were holding a metal weapon in hand. The fight was _here_ , now, in front of you, and if you didn't pay attention to that you weren't going to need to worry about any of that other stuff anyway, ever again.

They did not speak as they swung and closed with each other and swung again, not even to exchange the traditional insults. All of her breath now was for the fight, for dodging and parrying and blocking a blow that was aimed at her head, for gasping in pain at a swing that grazed her side and opened up a shallow cut through a gap in her armor, but to keep going, always to keep going, even though her arms shook harder and her gasping breaths came out harsher with every turn of the battle, because the trolls had never stopped to ask whether she needed a break and come Ragnarök, the giants and the wolf wouldn't either. Being chosen for single combat was an honor. Then, she'd pushed herself past every limit because other people had needed her; now, she did it for herself.

Only when she'd nearly reached the point where her body was about to physically give out on her, and she didn't think she'd be able to go even another minute without disgracing herself by collapsing, only then did he signal a halt, and sheathed his weapon, smiling.

"Well done."

At that, Sigrun _did_ collapse, falling to her knees in the thick mud, a hand pressed to her side. Her legs and arms felt like overcooked noodles. She was so exhausted that even her _teeth_ ached in their sockets.

A warm chuckle above her, and then something tapped lightly against her forehead. Looking up, she saw the edge of the beautifully-forged hammer: a weapon that could drop a giant with a single blow, now healing her wounds and restoring her strength with a feather-light touch.

The clouds were already breaking when she pushed herself to her feet, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. In the seconds it took her to sheathe her blade, she looked away; when she looked up again he was gone, as if he had never been there at all.

No evidence. No battle scars or trophies. Not even his word—only hers, and her wet hair and the mud on her clothes, which could have come from anywhere.

…Sigrun changed into a fresh set of clothes, and took care to dry herself thoroughly, before she joined the feast.

Sometimes, it was okay to brag about your triumphs: when you singlehandedly slew a giant, or dragged your crew in one piece out of the Silent World against all odds. This, though, was something different. This moment had been for her, and her alone.

Sigrun smiled a small, private smile as the first taste of mead splashed across her tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the heroic story while it lasts. Because my next thing... is really not nice. There is no niceness in the near future.
> 
> Also, been noticing that every time I post an Ensi story, I get next to no feedback. Am I that bad at writing Ensi, or do people just not care about her?


	13. A Murder of Crows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil always knew his past would catch up with him someday. He always knew that it would be messy and traumatic. Knowing what's coming, however, doesn't make what he has to do any easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Murder of Crows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ2l3fZHSd4)" by Sum 41
> 
>  **Continuity:** One possible sequel to [Just a Job to Do](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22260422)
> 
>  **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Modern day, Assassin)
> 
>  **Characters:** Emil
> 
>  **Relationship:** Emil  & Sigrun, background Emil/Lalli
> 
>  **Warnings:** Major character death, murder, villainization of a main character, mentions of past abuse and brainwashing
> 
>  **Other Tags:** In the style of Kill Bill

"Whatever happens, I want you to promise me you'll stay out of it. This is my fight."

Lalli continued to stare at him for a few minutes, eyes piercing. Emil waited; he would speak in his own time, and one only needed to have patience. "Even if you'll die?"

"Even if I'll die."

Briefly, he was afraid that Lalli wasn't going to agree. Then, however, the other man gave a slow, deliberate nod.

 _The first few, they'd fought together. After years and lifetimes of not trusting anybody, of not being_ allowed _to get close to anybody, it was important to establish that bond of trust. To know that they had each other's backs. To have someone to hold onto you when the adrenaline wore off and the shaking started, when it hit you, really hit you, that you'd finally managed to free yourself and get away from it all but you'd never really been free at all, because here you were again, standing with your bloodied weapons in hand as proof that you'd taken yet another life…_

This time, though, was different. The ones before had all been nameless, faceless, people they'd never met or who had been hired since their time. As long as he didn't know them, Emil could pretend, at least long enough to get the job done, that they were not humans but monsters, that the world would be a better place with them no longer in it.

This one… well, in all honesty those justifications were still _true_. For Emil, though… for Emil she'd been someone he'd known, talked to. Trained with. No matter what it was he knew she'd done, he'd never truly be able to stop thinking of her as his mentor.

"I'll stay out of it."

 _They'd first spotted his potential due to his skill for making explosions—big ones, the kind that could be used to make Statements. At first, when he'd been kicked out of multiple other positions for recklessness and being a danger to those around him, the offer of work had been a lifeline—but when he'd_ truly _learned what he was getting into, it had become a trap._

_His uncle's affection for him had extended just far enough not to have him silenced the second it became apparent that his moral qualms would not be so easily squashed—but neither could they afford to let him go, not when he already knew so much._

_"This is our nephew. He's a lot greener than we would like, so we were hoping that you could… ah… whip him into shape, until he can do a passable job."_

"Look, I'm not going to lie to you. You know and I know that I'm here to bring back your head. We can do that the easy way, or the hard way." Emil swallowed. It was nearly the same thing she'd said to him when she'd forced him to make _his_ first kill up close… "Just accept that you lost, and I'll be sure to keep it quick and painless."

"No." He drew his gun. "They stole enough of my life already. I'm not going to let them have the rest of it. I'm sorry it had to end like this, but…"

Sigrun did not seem disappointed. Instead she grinned, manically, that same killing glint in her eyes that he'd long since learned meant that there would soon be blood decorating the walls, lots of it. "I was hoping you'd say that. No right-hand warrior of _mine_ goes down without a fight."

There was nothing more to say. They drew, and fired.

Sigrun and Emil were both good shots, but neither of them had Lalli's sniper accuracy, and it was hard to aim properly when you were also dodging another shooter's barrage of bullets. Cover came first: an amenable boulder, a wide tree. Then it was a war of attrition, fire, reload, keep to your cover as bullets flew over your head and past your ear.

Emil had no idea how much ammo she had. Frankly, that was a bet he wouldn't want to make, not when Sigrun was the one with the backing from a powerful group who dearly wanted him dead—but Emil hadn't survived on his own for this long without having a few tricks up his sleeve.

Ducking behind the cover of his rock, he pulled out a grenade. He pulled the pin, carefully counted, then risked his head to hoist himself above the boulder and throw.

For precious seconds, the battle seemed to freeze. A stinging in his ear as he released his missile told him that he'd been hit—but it was _just_ the ear, cosmetic, nothing to threaten his life. An explosion of curses in Norwegian rang out from in front of him… seconds before the _actual_ explosion hit.

Emil knew what to do. Even before the concussion rent the air he was ducking, covering his head and trusting the rock to shield the rest of his body from the worst of the flying debris. For a few minutes after, his ears rang and dirt rained down on top of his back, but he gritted his teeth and pushed himself up as soon as the debris had stopped flying; he could not afford to let his guard down, not when she might still be up and fighting.

" _Don't_ ever _let your guard down in the middle of a job! As far as you're concerned, your target isn't dead until you've seen the body and taken a pulse._ "

He approached cautiously, ears still ringing, squinting through the smoke and dust that was still hovering in the air. There was now a large crater close to the tree that Sigrun had been hiding behind, along with a scattering of wood splinters and some blood.

…not enough blood for a mortal wound. No sign of a body.

 _Shit._ Emil swept the area with his eyes and the barrel of his gun, still straining for any sound through the ringing in his ears. Sigrun wasn't Lalli… she wasn't stealthy at all… but that didn't mean she didn't know when not to show herself…

The gun jerked out of his hands even as his eyes landed on a shock of red hair.

In shock, the only thing he could do for a few seconds was look from his stinging hands, to his old teacher in front of him, to his weapon that lay now far out of his reach—and the throwing knife that had knocked it from his hands.

Only Sigrun would bring a knife to a gunfight… and only Sigrun could actually get _away_ with doing that.

The blast had not let her get away unruffled: a steady stream of blood was dripping down her forehead, one of her eyes was squeezed shut, and she carefully held her left arm tucked in close against her side, where Emil could see blooms of red already beginning to soak through her sleeve. In spite of all of that, though, she was still grinning at him like a maniac.

"Heh… not bad. Looks like some of the things I taught you got into your head after all."

Don't ever stop to converse with your prey… that was another thing she had taught him, but they'd hit a lull, and frankly what did he have to lose? Emil pointed to the knife on the ground. "You could have buried that in my _throat_."

She shrugged—or at least, as much as she _could_ shrug with the use of only one arm. "Didn't seem honorable. Maybe you did go rogue, but you're still one of our own."

The honest frankness of that statement put an unexpected hitch in his breath, and in spite if their past, in spite of the fact that he _knew_ , because she'd taught him, how absolutely _stupid_ it was to stand around talking in the middle of a battle, Emil found himself forcing himself to speak around the equally-unexpected lump in his throat, because for whatever reason, he could not allow this illusion to stand—whether for her sake, or for his own. "That was always your problem, Sigrun. Yours, and Uncle Torbjörn's, and the whole rest of that rotten organization… you still don't understand why I left, do you? You were too caught up in trying to turn me into something I was not."

Once more, Sigrun looked more amused than offended. "Okay, I'll play along. So what was that?"

He forced himself to meet her eyes. "You. A murderer like you. Someone who lives for the fight, who kills without mercy… call me soft if you want to, but that's not something I'm willing to do anymore. It's not something I _ever_ wanted to do."

Sigrun had seemed eager for the fight. Now, she just looked bored.

"Seriously?" She cocked an eyebrow. "You know that only one of us is going to walk out of here alive no matter what you say, and you're still giving me _this?_ "

"Whether you want to hear it or not, that's not going to make it any less true."

"And whether you say it or not, it's not going to make one of us any less dead."

In which case, there was nothing more to say. Emil sighed, and drew his knife—the only weapon he still had on his person.

Sigrun was bigger, stronger, and more experienced than Emil was—not to mention she'd been practicing far more often over the past three years, a practice Emil had been explicitly trying to get _away_ from. Still, he'd managed to injure her before they crossed blades, and that gave him just enough of an edge to even the field in his favor as they blocked and dodged and aimed flashing steel at the softest parts of each other's bodies. Emil managed to grab Sigrun's wrist centimeters away from her blade taking his eye. In retaliation, she aimed a crushing kick at his kneecap that forced him to jump back, or lose his mobility to crunching bone.

Honor, she'd said… she'd always said before that Emil had been _too_ honorable, thinking too much about what was right rather than what was needed to get the job done. Sigrun had shown him just enough respect to refrain from starting the fight before he was ready to do so—but that was as far as her honor was ever going to go. In all other respects, she was going to fight as dirty as she needed to, and if Emil was going to survive this battle, he was going to have to accept the one lesson she'd never quite managed to teach him.

He started aiming for kneecaps himself. He started aiming for eyes. He was sure he hadn't imagined the look of approval that flashed across Sigrun's face when he drove a foot upward at her groin, and she only managed to sidestep at the last split second.

In the end, it was a deceptively simple blow that did it: a cupped hand to the ear, applied with all the force and desperate strength of someone who'd just had his knife knocked from his hand and knew that win or lose, this was going to be his last shot.

For a split second, Sigrun could only stare at him with an expression of shocked bemusement— _What, that was it?_ —and Emil could only stand there, feeling stupid and vulnerable, with a hand on the side of her head and an icy dread spreading through his veins. Then, her face twisted in agony, her knife slipped from her fingers as her hands reached up to cover her own ears, and she collapsed in a writhing heap on the ground.

Emil had no idea how long his window was, but he wasn't going to take chances. Panting, he looked around him; his knife was nowhere in sight and he didn't know how far it had been flung when Sigrun had knocked it out of his hand, but a nearby glint of metal on the forest floor directed him to the presence of his gun, still loaded and ready to be fired. Without allowing himself any time to think, he retrieved it, rested the barrel on Sigrun's chest directly over her heart, and pulled the trigger.

A clean shot. Quick and painless.

By the time he'd finished throwing up and the heaving in his stomach had finally begun to subside, Lalli had emerged from wherever he'd been hiding and was nearly finished with the process of patching up the worst of his cuts. Wiping his mouth with a shaking hand, Emil turned to look at his lover, who currently had his other hand resting in his lap as he wound bandages around his forearm.

"Thank you," he wheezed, his voice nearly as shaky as his hands. "For keeping your promise."

Lalli shrugged, and didn't answer, because there was nothing to be said. He knew what it had cost Emil to do this—but he also knew why Emil had had to.

On some level, he still could not help but be grateful to her—after all, it was only thanks to _her_ teaching that he'd had a second chance at all, that he'd managed to live long enough to escape from that life. In the end, though, that had only made it all the harder to deliver the blow that had had to be made, knowing all the while that she would not have approved of anything less.

Lalli _didn't_ understand why Emil took the time to bury her—he couldn't even use the excuse of "hiding the evidence," as the scarring on the landscape and the multitude of spent shell casings on the forest floor could amply attest. Even so, Lalli waited only a few minutes before picking up a shovel of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This song looked like the most promising candidate out of everything I had in my list, but I was thinking 'Hm, it sounds a little angry for this fandom, I wonder which charcter - oh. Oh. Looks like it's time for Sigrun to get her turn at a villain AU.'
> 
> ...and this officially puts me at the exact halfway point of the Alphabet Soup Challenge. Yay?


	14. A Number to Murder Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in the military isn't all glory and medals. Sometimes, you have to do things that anyone else would balk at - but you do them anyway, because they're the right thing to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Number to Murder Two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-OISK1_l_c)" by ASG
> 
> **Setting:** End mission speculation
> 
> **Characters:** Emil
> 
> **Relationship:** Emil  & Sigrun
> 
> **Warnings:** Major character death, major trollification, euthanasia, major character permanent injury
> 
> **Other Tags:** Tragedy, Sigrun loses her arm again, I thought I was over my 'let's infect Tuuri' streak but apparently I'm not

Even just looking at the trail was bad enough. The occasional splashes of crimson to either side of it nearly made him sick.

Emil shivered, for reasons that had nothing to do with the cold, when the reality of exactly what both of those things meant hit him and hit him again, in spite of his best efforts to avoid thinking about this specific thing:

Tuuri was no longer Tuuri, but a bloodthirsty monster. Even if there had been doubts before, the fact had been well proved after she'd—

_No. Focus._ He knew where their target had gone: her trail was clear as day in the freshly fallen snow. Now, all he had to worry about was catching up with her before the still-falling flakes wiped out all evidence of her passage… and about what he was going to do once he did.

From behind him, a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned to look at Sigrun, and Sigrun looked at him.

"Can you?"

He turned again to look back at the bloody trail in the snow, more clawmarks than footprints now, and let out a breath. "I have to."

Sigrun nodded, and did not say anything more. According to Mikkel, she should not have been out here at all. According to her, she should have been doing this herself.

Still, she had shrugged into her jacket, tucked her knife into her belt, and had Mikkel tie off her sleeve, and Mikkel had voiced only a token protest before doing as she'd asked. She was the Captain, and if she no longer had the ability to fulfill this responsibility herself, she was at least going to see it through to the bitter end.

Nobody gets left behind.

_The cold winter weather had not let up, and the ground had remained too hard for a burial. Nevertheless, they'd wrapped Lalli up in a white sheet and placed him somewhere cold, somewhere he'd be out of the range of any hungry animals until they could light a proper pyre, because the thought of leaving him out in the snow to stare at the sky with glassy, unseeing eyes until he decayed or became something's dinner was a possibility that none of them wanted to consider._

_Lalli, in the end, hadn't been able to do it, not to one of his own family members—and he'd paid for his hesitation with his life. Now, they were short an essential crewmember and the troll that had once been Tuuri was now running around on the loose somewhere close to the Silent World base._

_Had Emil been allowed to, he'd have spent the rest of his time before pickup wandering the base in a daze, half-consciously expecting Lalli to poke his head around the corner at any moment with his barely-there smile you had to look to see. He hadn't been allowed to, though, because Lalli wasn't the only person they'd lost._

_Sigrun's faith in his abilities, he thought, had been badly misplaced—if_ Lalli _hadn't been able to follow through, Emil didn't see how anyone would expect that_ he _could. Exactly none of that mattered, though: right now, he was the only one who_ could _, and therefore he must._

The thick snow seemed to be weighting down his boots as he walked, and the leaden despair in his heart threatened to drag him still further down, down to the ground to never move again at all. That would have been an excuse, though, and he knew it. If the person who'd just lost an arm to infection and nearly lost her life to a fever could drag herself out of bed and out into the winter cold to do what was right by her crew, then Emil could push himself through his grief for long enough to do the same.

They'd been marching for a long time—how long, he didn't know—and Emil was half-hoping, half-fearing that the rapidly-softening trail would be blotted out by snowfall before they could find her, when they crested a hill, and saw it.

Their course had been running roughly parallel to the beach, and the muted expanse of water had been sometimes visible, sometimes not. Emil hadn't seen it for the last few minutes, but now it came into view, along with the end of the trail—and a much darker shape in the distance, moving around at the base of a snow-covered mound but no longer advancing forward.

It took Emil a few seconds of staring to realize that she was trying to dig a burrow. To find shelter… to get out of the cold…

Once again, Sigrun's hand landed on his back. She—it—had not yet noticed them, and she was within rifle range. Emil swallowed, and sighted along his rifle.

_"If you can't work up the will to do what needs to be done, then you ought to hang up your uniform right now and go live on a farm. Do something useful for the people who can."_

_Emil did not answer. He waited. Sigrun, for once, was deadly serious, and she wouldn't be wasting valuable minutes to have a heart-to-heart with him unless it was important._

_"But if you're starting to think about revenge… about getting even… you might as well toss away everything and go join the trolls."_

Tuuri hadn't killed Lalli— _it_ had, the Rash, the troll. The dark thing in the snow in front of him wasn't Tuuri anymore. Still, even _it…_ as Emil aimed, a bitter anger welled up in his heart, but directed toward the situation, the necessity, the sheer wasteful _pointlessness_ of Lalli's death… not the poor creature in front of him. Giving _that_ thing a quick release needed to be an act of compassion, not vengeance.

A shot rang out in the night. The dark shape in front of them gave a brief jerk… and then stopped moving altogether.

When Sigrun nodded and patted his back once more before drawing her dagger and making her way forward to confirm the kill, Emil let his gun arm drop and raised the back of his free hand to wipe his eyes.

He did not go down with Sigrun to see what he'd done. He didn't _want_ to see it, and besides there was no need: even if his bullet hadn't quite done the job, Sigrun was well-equipped enough to finish it on her own, and if anything else came after her, woken by the noise of his shot… well, he was already in an ideal position to cover her as he was.

When she came back, she gave only a brief nod, and they turned around without another word to make their way back to the base. Emil made sure to avoid looking at her dagger to see whether it sported any fresh traces of blood.

Two out of six—out of five if you only counted the people who were _supposed_ to be here—and a third permanently injured… far from the glory and riches he'd dreamed of when he'd first signed up, this mission had been a disaster from start to finish. Still, he was alive, and they had other people to protect who were also alive, and he'd have to wait to take the time to properly mourn Lalli and Tuuri until it was safe to do so. For now, though, he could only put one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, as he plodded his way back to shelter and the cold comfort of other people's presence.

The snow slowly filled up their tracks as they walked, until there was no sign that they'd ever been there at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be very, very glad that this song found its way onto my vetting list. Because the alternative was a high school AU complete with prom night.
> 
> (I'll wait a few moments for the screams of horror to subside.)
> 
> Anyway, we'll see whether this is the end of me killing/trollifying/ghostifying Tuuri. Or of forcing Emil to shoot one of his crewmates.


	15. An Ordinary Abnormality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because it's over, that doesn't mean it's _over_. Now, the surviving members of the crew must prepare to face the consequences of their survival...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[An Ordinary Abnormality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBST7Unt6IE)" by Amaranthe
> 
> **Continuity:** Sequel to [A Demon's Fate](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10689663/chapters/23887320)
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Universe (psychopath!Mikkel)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun, Emil, Reynir
> 
> **Warnings:** Villainization of a main character, mentions of past character death, mentions of past abuse/gaslighting/hazing, some victim blaming, overall depressing storyline
> 
> **Other Tags:** Darkfic, I take one of my worst stories and go and make it worse, Reynir is surprisingly mature

They should have known that just because it was over, that didn't mean it was over at all.

There was only one thing that Sigrun thought would have helped out her shakes, and that was a return to the fight, to what was _normal_. Instead, though, she was cooling her heels under military arrest while her friends and comrades hunted trolls without her.

Some part of her wouldn't stop screaming that it just wasn't _fair_. All she had wanted was a relaxing vacation, an adventure with a new team. All she had done was try to protect that team from one of their own who was not what he said he was. Tried—and failed, yet her failure was not what she was being charged for.

Not fair… but then again, the more rational part of her knew that "fair" had never existed, wouldn't stop a troll from taking you or disease from turning you into one. "Fair" was an illusion—the reality was that it was his word against hers, and right now her chances of proving anything weren't looking too great.

Really. She was stuck. Her life was falling apart around her, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Right before Mikkel had tipped his hand and things had blown sky-high, she'd learned just after coming back, when she was still racked by fever and still nursing a deep ache in the limb she'd been lucky not to lose, he'd taken control of the radio and used it to make contact—not with their backers, but with a higher authority entirely. He and the Captain had had a falling-out, he'd said. She was out of control, a bloodthirsty psychopath. He was afraid for his life.

Afraid for his life… she'd nearly laughed out loud when she'd had the transcript read to her. _He'd_ been the one who'd very nearly killed _her_ , by his own inaction—and died by his arrogance, when he'd overestimated his own ability to survive in a venture that was _her_ area of expertise. In the end, the only hand Sigrun had laid on him had been to confirm what the troll had already done.

Which one of them was the violent one, which one had intended murder… In the end, it just came down to what each of them had said—and to which one of them was still alive.

There was a knock at the door—her door; at least they'd allowed her that much, and let her stay in a place of her own while she was under house arrest. Creaking open the door, Sigrun saw the face of one of her guards.

"It's time."

Sigrun said nothing. There was a time to talk, and a time to act, and she had never yet proven herself a coward. So she stood, and walked to the door, and allowed the guards to escort her to her trial.

* * *

Somewhere not too far away from her there was someone else who wasn't doing a whole lot better than Sigrun was.

In some ways, he was even doing _worse_. Not so much in the way he was treated—he was also kept out of the field, also confined to a limited space, and also living with the knowledge that his share of responsibility for the death of a crewmate was about to be judged for the whole of the Known World to see, but he was still treated as fairly as the situation allowed. Unlike Sigrun, however, this was the first time he'd had to deal with his life falling apart around him in any way that truly _mattered_ , and he had no prior experience in how to cope.

…after all, why should he have _expected_ to? People didn't commit murder in a world that made sense. People weren't even _accused_ of murder in that world, and they certainly didn't need to fear the danger of a mistaken verdict if they were in fact innocent.

Emil dug his hands into his hair. It _wasn't his fault—_ but try telling that one to his superiors.

_"He only got killed because he hit me on the head and ran off!"_

_"And what motive could a medic possibly have to hit you on the head?"_

_"He was trying to escape…"_

_Emil realized his mistake a second too late._

_"So you confirm that you were keeping him prisoner." Captain Nilsson folded her hands and placed them on her desk in a manner that was so carefully controlled that it spelled out Deep Trouble. Emil swallowed. "Explain."_

_"H-he was dangerous! He tried to take over the crew—"_

_"Which, if your captain had proven herself unfit to lead, was nothing less than his duty."_

_"The only reason she was 'unfit' was because she had an infection."_

_"If an officer can't be bothered to seek medical attention when she needs it, that's her own problem."_

_Emil forced himself to bite down on his next response—he didn't_ know _, after all, whether the regular checking of injuries was the purview of the injured person or the medic, but he did know that attempting to argue who was more at fault would be a losing battle. Instead, he changed tack. "Lalli—that's our scout, he…"_

_A sigh. "What did Lalli say he did?"_

_"Well… actually Lalli didn't say anything… he's only just started learning Swedish, and I don't speak Finnish at all…"_

_"Never mind," and Emil immediately knew he'd flubbed it again. "Just tell me what_ you _saw him do."_

_"I…"_

_He forced himself to stop right there, though, because even Emil knew how that particular response would be received. What, he couldn't deal with a little bit of hazing the same as any other recruit five years his junior? What, he couldn't take a joke, couldn't handle a harmless prank? So what if he'd been humiliated in front of everyone time after time? It was his own problem for being overly sensitive._

_There was nothing more Emil could say to be able to convince her. So in the end, he didn't speak, only hung his head._

_"I see. So, you were either a willing accessory to murder, were too incompetent to realize you were an accessory to murder, or are too incompetent to explain your innocence now." Nilsson pinched the bridge of her nose once before looking back at him. "Thankfully, that's no longer my place to judge—though I do pity the courts."_

The courts… this was really happening. He was really about to go on trial for being an accessory to murder.

He wanted to freeze up… or break down crying… or just put a pillow over his face and scream until the whole thing was over. None of those things were an option, though, and even if they didn't make him look guilty they would still make him look incompetent. If there was one thing he'd learned in the Silent World, it was that sometimes you needed to pull yourself together and save the breakdown for when you were safe.

In the end, the only thing that gave him away was the trembling of his hands.

* * *

"I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this."

His parents looked at each other, and then looked to his siblings. There was a brief moment of uncomfortable silence before Guðrun answered the unspoken plea and approached him.

"Reynir… it's okay to be nervous…"

"I know," he groaned into the wood of the table. If he lifted his head, he was afraid he was going to hyperventilate.

"Whatever they did to you out there—" Ólafur started, but Reynir interrupted him.

"No no no, you don't _understand!_ " Now both his arms were covering his head, which remained on the table.

Though he didn't raise his head to look, he could _feel_ his family giving each other worried looks. It wasn't hard to guess they were wondering how best to help him, what abuses he could _possibly_ have gone through that would leave him so broken. There was nothing they could do to help him, though—because they _didn't_ understand.

At first, Mikkel had seemed so… well, not _nice_ , exactly. Now that Reynir thought about it, not a single one of his actions had ever been kind—but he'd been _there_ , and he'd been someone to talk to, and he'd seen to it that Reynir was fed and sheltered while Lalli was glaring and Emil was standing guard over him like some sort of prisoner and Sigrun was still threatening to feed him to the trolls.

…and now, he was going to have to be honest about all of that, and he was going to hate himself for it, and everyone around him, up to and including his own family, was going to keep offering him the wrong kind of support because they had already convinced themselves it was something it wasn't.

" _Look,_ " Bjarni had tried to explain to him, " _sometimes people get… attached… to someone who… well. Point is, they maybe did something that seemed really crazy and mean at first, but after you'd spent enough time with them the crazy started to seem normal, and you started to think they weren't so bad after all, and started to get attached to some of them, and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way but that didn't actually make them any less mean…_ "

That was all Bjarni managed to get out before Reynir threw a pillow at him and pressed another over his face until his brother finally took a hint and left.

During his time on that mission he wasn't even supposed to be a part of, Reynir had taken on far more responsibility than his family knew or cared to know—he'd cooked, he'd cleaned, he'd tended the wounded, and he'd overall done his level best to fill the gap left behind by Mikkel when the latter had run off and gotten himself killed by a troll. He'd probably even… he tried _not_ to think about this too often, but he'd probably saved Sigrun's life when her attempts to push herself through on pure bravado had finally failed her, and he'd worked up the courage to insist on taking a look at her wounds himself.

Bjarni had been right that they'd seemed crazy at first… but they weren't _mean_. Not even Lalli, who'd only wanted his space, or Sigrun, who said nasty things when she was mad but would still put her life on the line to protect you when it really mattered. Reynir hadn't even gotten _used_ to the meanness, he'd just seen it for the series of misunderstandings it actually was. Of course, though, that wasn't how anyone _else_ would see it—not even when he'd been among the first to realize something was wrong.

No one before that crew had ever been willing to give him a chance, or to see him for what he truly was. To everyone else, though, he was nothing more than a brainwashed child, an inept civilian, a helpless non-immune who needed to be protected—and now he was going to be expected to turn against his friends.

There was no pillow thick enough to contain his screams of frustration.

* * *

When they met once more in Iceland, it did not have the feel of old friends having a long-awaited reunion, but of comrades preparing for battle.

They hadn't been allowed to talk or write to each other during that time. Even in the dream plane, Lalli's place had remained hidden, and Onni had been reluctant to talk to him as well. Still, they were here, and they were together: Lalli with his hood pulled over his face, Tuuri prodding her cousin through the crowds, Emil looking around nervously and wringing his hands, Sigrun with her head held high.

As for Reynir… well, the one good thing that had come of this summer was that his parents and siblings had agreed that he needed something to "take his mind off things," and thus for the first time he now had access to resources he'd never known existed and classes he'd never before have been allowed to take. In his head, he had enough Norwegian to hold at least a basic conversation—and Finnish was next on his list. In his heart, he had his runes—for healing, for protection, for guidance. In this situation, they might do him no more good than as a talisman of (perhaps foolish) hope, but nevertheless, he was glad to have them there.

_I'm going to help you_ , he thought as one by one, he caught their eyes, and nodded. _I don't know how yet, but I promise I will._

When Reynir had found himself alone and floundering in a strange, dangerous land, every single one of them had helped him in their own way. Now, it was time he returned the favor.

_I won't let you down._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's just a very, very rough sketch of what a possible sequel to this monster might be like...


	16. A Phase I'm Going Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reynir's parent's can't stop him from being a mage... but they _can_ stop him from knowing about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Phase I'm Going Through](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft6d-IeSF4s)" by Joe Satriani
> 
> **Setting:** Pre-mission
> 
> **Characters:** Reynir
> 
> **Warnings:** Some dysfunctional family dynamics
> 
> **Other Tags:** Mage powers, it's Talimee's fault

Slowly but surely, their lives were becoming impossible. No— _worse_ than impossible. Day and night, night and day, there was always something, _something_ , that was going horribly wrong.

_Nobody_ could seem to figure out what was wrong with their youngest little boy.

At first, they thought it was just a naughty phase Reynir was going through. After all, what sort of child burst into random fits of tears over spilled milk that hadn't even been spilled yet, only to "accidentally" tip the bucket a few minutes later? In the end, though, the obvious explanation didn't quite seem to fit: Reynir's remorse seemed too sincere, his efforts to avoid causing the thing he'd claimed would happen far too genuine.

After it became evident that he _wasn't_ just being naughty, it didn't take them long to figure out what _was_ wrong with him.

_This_ was why they'd decided to stick with the Dagrenning program rather than having a child of their own blood. After all, susceptibility to the Illness was far from the _only_ thing the use of a genetic donor could prevent from being passed on. Still, they'd had him, the worst had happened (on both of the counts they'd tried to prevent), and now they had to live with the consequences.

Sending him to the capital to learn to properly control his curse was out of the question. Their family hadn't left this land since the Old World had ended, and they weren't about to break that tradition now. Their Dagrenning children were different, but Reynir? Was not immune, and delicate, and vulnerable, and far too adventurous for his own good. If they let him go to Reykjavik now, who was to say he'd be satisfied with stopping there? For all they knew, after seeing the capital and getting a taste of the outside world he would no longer be satisfied with Iceland at all, and decide to travel abroad, and get himself infected, and…

No, under absolutely no circumstances could they send Reynir to the capital.

…as a matter of fact, it was probably better if Reynir never even learned that he was a mage. In addition to his curiosity, he was far too eager to make himself useful, and if he learned that he had such a potentially useful power (curse), he would no doubt want to use it. Then, he would want to use it for something more useful for keeping the sheep in the field… and he would want to go to the capital to get training… then he would want to go abroad where he would get infected…

It was decided, then. They would simply never tell him. Reynir's lack of dreaming could easily be dismissed as him simply not remembering his dreams—after all, not everyone did, mage abilities or not. The _other_ thing would be a little bit harder to cover up… but, well, they were isolated out here, the older children were out of the house and for the most part didn't come around long enough to notice anything odd, and Reynir was still far too young and ignorant to put two and two together on his own.

There was nothing they could do about him growing up, but they _could_ keep him ignorant. In the meantime, they would just have to ride this out and do their best to hold onto their sanity.

Trying to deny the veracity of Reynir's visions would be a quick way to make him start asking some very dangerous questions, so they decided early on that it would be best to minimize the damage by not even acknowledging it as a big deal at all.

"Sweetie, why are you hugging that lamb and crying?"

"B-b-because she's g-going to d-d-d-die!"

"Well yes, of course she is. _Everything_ dies eventually, sooner or later…"

"Reynir, why are you hiding under the table and covering your head?"

"We're going to have a hailstorm today!"

"Don't worry about it, we already know." (They made some hasty preparations after Reynir had been shooed off to his room.)

"Reynir, that milk…"

"It's gone bad."

"Yes, yes, we were just about to throw it out ourselves."

…they were sure that it would have to end _some_ day. Right?

"It's just a phase," they told themselves—and others, the few times anyone stuck around long enough to notice anything unusual—over and over and _over_ again. "It's just a phase he's going through… he'll get better as he gets older… we're not going to have to put up with this forever…"

It took time and a lot of frustration, but eventually, finally, at long last, Reynir did at least seem to be calming down.

"Reynir, honey? Is something bothering you?"

"I thought I saw… no, never mind. It's nothing."

When they started to get this answer increasingly more as time went on, they looked at each other in relief. It seemed that all of their hard work had finally paid off, and Reynir had at long last managed to overcome his curse.

It was for the best, they told themselves even as they watched Reynir's increasing confusion and restlessness. If he had managed to forget that he'd ever had a reason to leave home, then he would never leave home. From now on, their son would be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I was getting antsy about possible future events in the comic, and then Talimee said something to the effect of "No point crying over spilled milk that hasn't even been spilled yet," and somehow my brain immediately churned out _this_. Congratulations!


	17. A Question of Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything's finally over... almost. Lalli just has to deal with one last thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Question of Honor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft6d-IeSF4s)" by Sarah Brightman
> 
> **Setting:** Post-mission, Dreamworld
> 
> **Characters:** Lalli
> 
> **Warnings:** None
> 
> **Other Tags:** Spawn of the comments section

Lalli wished it had not come to this.

There had been a wrong done—some of it on his part, most of it on another's, but at this point such things no longer mattered. He was the one who was here, he was the one who made the most convenient target, and so it was on his shoulders that the reparations would fall.

It wasn't fair—but then again, life never was, and Lalli had a duty to fulfill.

"Lalli," Emil started, cautiously, still very much aware as he had not been before of the damage a fit of carelessness could do. "Are you really… I mean, are you _sure_ about this?"

Of course Emil didn't understand—he didn't have Lalli's perception or Lalli's view of the world, and he never would, and there was nothing that either one of them would ever be able to do about that. There was no point in getting upset with Emil over that fact; it just was. "I'm sure," he answered instead; there was nothing more to say. "Don't interfere."

Emil, at long last, nodded, and even forced out a small, nervous smile. "Be careful out there, okay?"

"I will."

When he woke up in his place, he was ready.

This was his private place, his haven. As long as he was here, he had once thought, nothing could touch him. Years and experience had taught him the folly of that way of thinking—but instead of once more giving in to bitterness, he had learned to embrace the experience that would help him _live_.

Once he reached his barrier, he hesitated for a moment, but then parted it cleanly—he could feel it out there; it had been haunting him for far too long as was. It was time to face his past, and end it cleanly, face to face.

"I know you're out there," he whispered, the chill of the air cold on his skin and the chill of the water wrapping around his boots as he stood, vulnerable, exposed, on the top of the wide rock. "It's time we ended this."

At first, nothing happened. Then, there was the vague wispy feel of another presence beside him.

Hate—it hated him. Even as he watched the dream plane darkened, and he felt a chill as it attempted to latch onto and drain his life in return for its own.

It was weak, far weaker than he had expected—after all of this time it had had very little to sustain itself, and even now was starting to fade. Still, it was the same presence that had haunted his dreams for years. He was never going to forget it, nor fail to treat it with the gravity it deserved.

…still, neither could he neglect to treat it with respect. Their histories went back so far; Lalli thought he owed it better than that.

So he waited, and his patience was rewarded when eventually, it showed itself in full.

It was going to try to avenge itself, he knew, just as it had all of those other times. It was time that he put an end to it, rather than desperately running and hiding from his past as he so long had. He gripped his pukko. He inhaled in preparation for raising his voice in song. Then, just as it had finally finished materializing in full, he brought his foot down, crushing it beneath the heel of his boot.

The small, delicate flower wriggled and strained one last time, as if reaching for sunlight—before collapsing to a heap of squashed petals beneath Lalli's firm stance, just as it had had the life squashed out of it in the waking world, countries and lifetimes ago.

"I'm sorry," he said, not loosening his hold, "but it's for your own good."

Thus, he sent it on its way to Tuonela with a spell and a song.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I (and the comments section) decided that that poor little squashed wood anemone deserved some sense of closure as well.


	18. A Race Against Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A desperate last stand can be either a heroic gamble or a fool's errand... only victory or defeat will tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Race Against Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSvVuGT1XrQ)" by Pylot
> 
> **Continuity:** Sequel to [Oxygen](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/22902855) and [A Bit of an Awkward Situation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10689663/chapters/23695779)
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Mecha)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun, Mikkel, Emil, Tuuri
> 
> **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Mikkel
> 
> **Warnings:** Main character permanent injury; possible/ambiguous character death
> 
> **Other Tags:** Can you tell I watched way too much anime during my college years?

They were alive.

It was only two pilots, two former pilots, and a small handful of personnel, but somehow, they'd made it out alive and they'd managed to get to a banged-up but livable alternate base. Two battered mechs slumped in the hangar, looking nearly as exhausted and wrung-out as their respective pilots felt.

"Never again," Tuuri muttered. "I'm never getting in that thing again."

Nobody answered. Not even Tuuri could deny that she would eventually _have_ to, desire or not, but there was no point in stating the obvious, so nobody did.

"Be sure to rest while you can," Mikkel had said, and so Emil had slouched off to get cleaned up and find a bunk, dragging his feet in spite of the lower gravity. Tuuri had followed soon after. Sigrun, though, had spent the whole time staring out of the viewscreen.

"That was intended to include you as well," Mikkel said, coming up behind her, shortly after the others were out of earshot.

"Don't see you following your own advice." She had not turned from the screen, instead resting her fingers lightly against its surface.

They lapsed into silence after that. They were far too used to saying nothing, it seemed, to easily break their long lack of communication.

"We're going to lose everything if we don't take action soon."

He was startled to hear her speak. Throughout the evacuation she'd been uncharacteristically quiet—first for the very understandable reason that she'd been gasping to get her breath back, but even later, during the ride on a cramped and dirty shuttle guarded by two battered mechs, she'd barely said a word.

"Are you sure that's viable?" was the only answer he could think to give—because it was the only sensible answer. "We have little in the way of resources. Tuuri and Emil are still very green. And in case you've forgotten that we can't pilot anymore—"

"I wasn't _asking_ for you to try to hold us back again, Mikkel!"

"Then what _were_ you asking for?" Long as he'd managed to hold it back and force it down, the old anger was starting to bubble up once more, and this time his target was proving herself to have earned it all over again… "For me to give you leave to risk lives, again, in the name of some desperate last-ditch effort—"

She laughed. Low, bitter, sounding nothing like her usual hearty guffaw. "How about you stop _pretending_ already?"

When he answered, his voice came out surprisingly cold. "I'm not _pretending_ anything."

There it was again: that low, bitter laugh. "I know you've got everyone else fooled. By this point you might even be fooling yourself. But you can't fool me. Remember, I know you."

"And what," he asked, projecting an untroubled exterior even though he was seething inside, "do you think you know?"

"You really don't remember?" The scarred side of her face was turned to him, making her difficult to read, but even so Mikkel thought he caught a glimpse of genuine surprise in her eyes. "The whole thing was your idea!"

He froze. Not just his body either; it seemed that his insides had frozen as well. _She's lying_ , he thought—but Sigrun didn't lie. If Sigrun was anything, she was honest, and the thought of her telling a deliberate untruth made about as much sense as the thought of her giving up her life as a warrior to settle down for a career of domestic bliss. Surely, though, she must be confused, or misremembering, or just so determined to shift the blame that she'd finally convinced _herself…_

Mikkel felt like he was falling. He hadn't done such a thing—he _couldn't_ have done such a thing! _Sigrun_ was the reckless one, the one who got them into trouble… he was the sensible one, the cautious one… there was no way he would have…

Sigrun was watching him intently. She no longer looked angry; now that she'd turned to face him fully, Mikkel could indeed see true confusion. "All this time, and you've been blaming me for what happened because I went along with _your_ idea? You seriously actually thought—"

"Stop." He held up a hand. "Let me think."

To her credit, she did, and Mikkel sat there straining his mind as he tried to think back to what had happened that night. They were so tangled up with each other when they piloted that it was hard, sometimes, to separate one's thought from the other's… but he'd been _so sure_ that _he'd_ been the one advising caution while _she_ had insisted on rushing in…

What had been their objective? Oh yes, now he remembered—of course the lowly pilots hadn't been given _all_ the strategic information, but they'd been told enough. It had been a long shot from the beginning, a desperate gamble. Still, if they managed to pull it off, there was a chance they'd be able to neutralize the Beholder threat, and put an end to this war once and for all…

Of _course_ he'd wanted it! He'd wanted to be rid of the army position he was no more suited to than anything else in the long string of jobs he'd already been fired from, but which, unlike them, he was unable to leave. He'd wanted to be free from this war, from the constant pressing fear that humanity had to live in for the simple crime of existing. And maybe, just maybe, for once in his life he'd wanted his actions to _count_ , to be remembered not as the obnoxious prankster who couldn't get along with anybody, but as a hero, a genius, a savior…

True, Sigrun had wanted the glory just as much as he had. She hadn't required much in the way of convincing. Still, her enthusiastic agreement had been a far cry from her dragging him into a dangerous situation against all warnings and precautions.

"I've been an idiot."

It was the closest he'd ever be able to come to saying sorry—but he knew that Sigrun, knowing him as she did, would be able to tell what it meant.

* * *

The viewscreen showed them only the most general glimpses of the pitched battle outside.

They had known, from the beginning, that it was yet another long shot, yet another fool's chance. Still, there was a difference between preparing for a battle being _aware_ that you would probably lose, and seeing that loss take place right before your eyes.

"We need to help them."

"What, exactly, do you propose we do?" He hadn't meant the response to sound snappish, but it could be difficult to contain his natural sarcasm when he was under stress. "Neither one of us can pilot anymore. Unless you want to ram the whole station straight into the battle, and take the support crew down with us—"

"There you go again, only thinking of all the worst options and completely ignoring everything else." She was _excited_ , he realized—Mikkel hadn't seen her this worked up since… since…

…oh dear. Since the last time she'd piloted a mech.

"Sigrun," he started slowly, "I know we've both had some crazy ideas in the past. But this… whatever it is you're thinking, you _have_ to know that it won't work."

"And why not? Anybody ever tried it before?"

"It's been scientifically proven—"

"Oh, psh. You think there's anything 'scientifically proven' about piloting in the first place? If we only ever relied on what we _thought_ we could do, we'd've never got off the ground." She held out a hand. "So? What do you say we try something crazy?"

* * *

Emil wasn't sure how much longer they'd be able to hold on.

The mechanics had not had the time or the equipment to do more than jerry-rig the necessary repairs, and their mechs were feeling it. They were slower to respond than they should have been, and parts of Emil's control panel were sparking in an incredibly worrying way. Still, he and Tuuri were doggedly continuing the fight, because if they didn't make a last stand here they were all dead anyway.

An attempt to move produced only a shuddering jerk, and then he was dead in the water: one of his thrusters was out. Tuuri turned; she was trying to get to him, but there were too many enemy mechs between her and him, and Emil knew she would never reach him on time. He sighed, raised his gun, thanked his past self for remembering to take a bathroom break prior to strapping in, and hoped that he'd at least manage to go out with dignity…

A blast from the side flashed into existence, knocking the attacker straight out of his line of sight.

Where— _that wasn't Tuuri!_ He'd have _known_ if it had been Tuuri—besides, Tuuri wasn't in that direction; she was in front of him, desperately fighting her own battle…

The question was answered for him when their mysterious savior barreled through the mob of enemy mechs attacking Tuuri, and he heard Tuuri's gasp of surprise over the radio.

"S- _Sigrun!?_ "

It _couldn't_ be… but…

The mech was an older model, one that he vaguely recognized as a retired machine that had been sitting off to the side of the hangar and which he'd assumed at the time was only kept around for spare parts. He certainly _hadn't_ expected it to still be functional. That wasn't even the biggest problem, though…

"Sigrun, get out of here!" Tuuri sounded panicked, and with good reason. "You're going to end up doing their work for them if you stay out here without a tarma!"

A warm, low chuckle emanated through the speakers. "And what makes you think that I don't?"

No, it couldn't be—but the fact remained that she was out here, with them, doing what should have been the impossible, and they weren't trying to kill each other. Emil powered up his own radio.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Nah, not really"—his stomach leaped into his throat—"but Mikkel does."

…it settled back down again.

"I hope it doesn't require me to move," Emil confessed. "My thrusters are dead."

"Nope, all you have to do is shoot." Somehow, Emil got the feeling that this had _not_ been a part of Mikkel's original plan—but the circumstances had changed, and Sigrun was doing what Sigrun did best, and adapting their plans to fit. He gave the affirmative.

"Tuuri, I need you to cover him, but I also need both of you to take a few shots directly into the enemy line. Can you do that?"

"Y-yes."

"All right! Then let's show them what we've got!"

Whatever part Mikkel was playing, Emil did not hear her consult with him—but then again, she would not need to.

* * *

They'd always been taught that the bond they shared was impermanent, intended only for use on the battlefield. After the battle ended, they would no longer have any need.

Mikkel, for his part, was no longer so sure about that. So much of what they did was still not understood even by the people who'd pioneered it, after all, and today, he'd just seen Sigrun pull off the impossible. By themselves, each of them had been reduced to half a pilot, unable to function as they were supposed to. Together, though… well, he wasn't going to pretend he had any understanding of _how_ she'd managed to make use of his unscarred skin to interface with her mech when they were literal miles apart, nor how reestablishing their bond of trust had somehow renewed their ability to connect again. It wasn't something that could be explained. It simply _was_.

Win or lose, they were going to win or lose _together_.

"Let's end this. Once and for all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *listening to music*
> 
> *this AU pops up*
> 
> 'What, you _again?_ I'm finished with you! Why will you not just accept that I'm finished with you? Argh!'
> 
> Also, I might still be backlashing a bit over the way the fandom still continues to blame Sigrun for Mikkel's mistakes...


	19. A Slow Parade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even when you've made your own choices, that doesn't mean you have no regrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Slow Parade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EePkaW6pALY)" by A. A. Bondy
> 
> **Continuity:** Sequel to [Blaze of Glory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/21142538), [Running to Stand Still](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9308429/chapters/23001240), and [A Horse with No Name](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10689663/chapters/24427806)
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Western)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun
> 
> **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Trond
> 
> **Warnings:** Major character death; mentions of murder; literal damnation to literal Hell
> 
> **Other Tags:** Deal with the devil

Being dead wasn't what she'd expected.

She'd expected… well, to be honest she hadn't known quite what to expect. Maybe to be whisked right away down to fire and brimstone. Maybe a bright light, or to feel nothing at all. This, though… this was unlike _anything_ the stories had told.

As for the man standing in front of her… the one she'd just shot down…

Well, _he_ sure wasn't what he'd expected either. When she thought about it, she supposed it made sense for him to be old—after all, it had been decades, and he'd been a grown man then when she was still but a child—but that wasn't how she'd pictured him in her head. Still, there was never any doubt that he was the right one. If he hadn't been, she would still be alive.

"Figured one or another of them would have to catch up with me sooner or later," he said now, looking down at his own body—as she looked at hers, both stained with red, both with a spent pistol in their hands. "Only fitting that it would be you."

Sigrun said nothing. So much time had passed since she'd first laid eyes on him, and when she'd found him, he hadn't been living the life of a murdering monster. Maybe he was sorry, maybe not—but whatever he felt or didn't, "sorry" wouldn't bring back her parents. It wouldn't restore the life that she'd lost. Taking his had been all that was left for her. So instead of answering, she nodded, and left it at that.

"Well, no more point in standing here jawin'. I expect the Old Man will be wanting to see me now. Best not keep him waiting." He pushed himself to his feet, and tipped his hat. "I suppose I won't be seeing you again." Then, he was off, disappearing into the mist with not another word.

He didn't know.

Of course—he'd had no reason not to believe she'd tracked him down all on her own (well, to be fair, she more or less _had_ ), but that she'd somehow managed to supply herself, that she'd paid her own way, that her own life would oh-so-coincidentally end at the same moment as his…

Had it been worth it?

That, to be honest, was a question Sigrun still couldn't answer—but she supposed she'd know soon enough.

She sat down on a rock, in the mist, and looked down at herself—at him. The world was hazy, darkened. The warmth of the sun had vanished with the beating of her heart, leaving only a vague clinging chill in its place—not like the crisp healthy cold of winter, but a clamminess that clung onto her and seemed to seep into her bones. Sigrun shivered, and tried not to think what it meant that she could still feel discomfort even though her body would never move again.

He kept her waiting.

He was a busy man, he'd said when she'd first met him all those years ago. He didn't have the time to babysit her. Busy doing what, she'd never asked—it wasn't like she didn't have an inkling anyway. Still, knowing what he was it was hard to believe that where and when had much of a meaning for him, but there wouldn't be much point worrying about it, so she didn't.

What he was actually doing, she thought, was giving her time to stew—to wonder, to regret. Of course, it wouldn't do her a whole lot of good to think about that either, but knowing a thing and following it through are two very different things.

Her parents… she'd avenged them, blood for blood. Now that she'd accomplished it, though, Sigrun couldn't help but wonder whether they'd have approved of what she'd done. They'd been losing their gods even in their own land and they'd lost all guidance when they'd set foot on the shore of this country with its only two, one who demanded the impossible for rest and one who'd give the impossible for too high a price. She still couldn't say for sure which one of them was right.

"I suppose this is the point where you try to worm your way out of it."

He'd come up on her silently, out of the mist where she couldn't see him (not that she'd been looking anyway, by that point), and was now looking down on her where she sat atop her rock. No horse; he was on foot, and he hadn't aged a day since the first time she'd seen him, all those years ago. He didn't seem nearly as large as he had back then; Sigrun was sure that if she stood, she'd tower over him. She didn't stand, though. There was no point. They both knew who it was who held the real power here.

"No. I know what I agreed to." She took a long breath out, tried once again not to wonder what it meant that she could still breathe. "Just… give me a minute."

It was more than a minute she took, she was sure. Nevertheless, he did not rush her. They had all of eternity, after all. One minute for her to grieve, or ten minutes, or even ten hours, was absolutely nothing as far as he was concerned.

Nothing… there was absolutely nothing left for her. Her hand was covering her mouth. For the first time since she'd returned to the ranch only to find a blazing inferno where her home used to be, her eyes were wet. She'd avenged her family, but she was never going to see them again. Her life had had a purpose, but now, in death, she'd be nothing more than another lost soul.

"You did have a way out, you know." His voice came again from above her, and had she not known what he was he would have sounded almost… pitying. "If you had managed to forgive, and move on, there was someone else who would have taken you. The only one keeping that bargain intact was you."

Once again, there was no answer to that. After all, she couldn't very well say "I couldn't"—it had to be that he already knew. So Sigrun said nothing, willed her shaking shoulders to still, and stood. Her eyes were scratchy and probably rimmed with red, but they were once again dry.

"I'm ready."

Together, they walked off into the mist. The sound of the sea faded slowly behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This _was_ all set to be a Tuonela story before gunslinger!Sigrun waltzed in and demanded the spotlight. Not that I minded all that much. I think it was the line about the horse that did it.


	20. A Thousand Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has a breaking point. When Lalli reaches his, it might very well be the end of the entire crew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Thousand Words](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDyZbRnJ1u8)" by Savage Garden
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Universe (Chapter 15)
> 
> **Characters:** Lalli
> 
> **Relationship:** Lalli  & crew
> 
> **Warnings:** Villainization of a main character, major character death, murder-suicide, some very strongly implied troll cruelty
> 
> **Other Tags:** Kade!Lalli, yep it was Lalli's turn for a villain AU, it's Aliax's fault, I take yet another angry breakup song and turn it into a story about familial estrangement

It wasn't until after the dismay over Tuuri's condition (it wasn't like they hadn't seen it coming, but it was one thing to _predict_ an event and quite another to see it happening right in front of one's eyes) had settled that anyone thought to ask the obvious question:

"Wait a minute, where is Lalli?"

"I… I need to get him to tell my brother," Tuuri had said, and then Sigrun had remembered they would still need someone to scout them a safe route for the morning's walk, and Emil was brought to the realization all over again that he had spent the whole day wanting to go to Lalli, to find out what was wrong and make it better… but now that they needed him, Lalli was nowhere to be found.

"Great." Sigrun leaned her head against the side of the tank. "Just what we needed, for the scout to go and get himself eaten by something right before we're about to leave."

"We do not know that Lalli was eaten," Mikkel countered. "He was sitting on the edge of the camp for most of the day. Had there been a troll or a beast nearby, someone would have noticed it."

Nobody mentioned that there _had_ effectively been a troll nearby, and everyone had been too focused on _that_ little problem to keep track of the scout.

"M-maybe he went to work early," Tuuri pointed out. "Lalli doesn't deal well with stress. I bet he just ran off to avoid…" She couldn't finish, and left it at that.

The explanation made sense. It wasn't as if Lalli didn't know how to do his job and it wasn't as if he didn't know where they were going; all of them were coping in their own ways and if Lalli needed to run a bit, let him run. After a more thorough check in all of the usual places—under the beds and around the nearest trees just outside the perimeter of the camp—with no signs of either Lalli or that something dreadful had happened to Lalli, Sigrun said, "Y'know what, unless we wake up tomorrow and he's still not here, I'm going to assume that that's what he did," and everyone else was forced to agree, because with the sun going down there was simply nothing else that they could do. That decided, everyone wandered off to their own uneasy sleep.

* * *

The next morning, Lalli still wasn't there.

"We have to go out and look for him!" Emil insisted frantically, but Sigrun grabbed his arm.

"Woah there buddy. We are not running off into the Silent World without any preparation."

"I concur." Mikkel, behind them, was scanning the trees, though he too seemed to be ill at ease. "Rushing in headlong without a plan to locate someone who may or may not still be alive would be foolish at best and suicidal at worst."

"But we have to do _something!_ " Emil was nearly frantic with worry.

"And we will." Sigrun clapped him on the shoulder. "We're just going to make sure that _we_ don't get killed."

"Do you have a plan?" Mikkel asked. "Because I—"

"First, get me the civvie."

"His haven is there, but Lalli's not in it," Reynir related as soon as he'd come out of his trance. "I… guess that means he's still alive?"

When this piece of information was translated, Emil breathed a sigh of relief. Lalli hadn't died out there. But if he was still alive… then where was he?

"So," Sigrun was asking Tuuri, "any idea where your cousin might have run off to?"

"I… I don't know… but sometimes Lalli avoids everyone for weeks when he's upset…"

"Yeah, well, we don't have weeks."

Emil tuned them out as he looked off into the trees. Lalli… Lalli had been so upset the last time they'd talked, and he'd avoided everyone all throughout the afternoon and evening. He'd looked so tired… he'd been so worried about his cousin… if his mind had been on that rather than on his scouting… maybe he was still alive, but that didn't mean he couldn't have gotten hurt out there, and was now lying somewhere out in the woods alone, helpless, unable to make it back…

"So it's decided, then."

Sigrun's voice snapped him back to reality. "Sorry? What are we going to do?"

"Find the scout, of course. Freckles says he can follow a trail if he knows what to look for, and Big Guy there's drawn up a grid of the area if he can't. So we'd better get moving before we burn any more daylight."

Emil's knees felt weak. He nearly collapsed with relief. "Th-thank you."

"Nobody gets left behind in the Silent World." Sigrun clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "Now grab your stuff and let's go."

* * *

It was slow going.

First and foremost, they had to look out for Reynir, because the absolute _last_ thing they needed on this trip was to be going home with _two_ infected people. So not only did he have his mask strapped tightly to his face, Sigrun and Emil walked to either side of him, hands hovering just over their weapons.

Sigrun shouldn't have been out here at all, really. She should have been back at camp resting, so as to avoid a relapse before their first hard day's march. She'd insisted on coming, though, and nobody had been able to find a valid protest. The untrained sheepherder needed someone who could protect him, and nobody wanted to put that faith in a still-not-fully-tested rookie. What's more, Lalli was a member of _her_ crew, and therefore _her_ responsibility.

Mikkel and Tuuri followed, but at a distance: both because of the now-confirmed need to keep Tuuri and Reynir apart, and so they would be out of the line of fire if it did come to a fight. Mikkel had his medical bag slung over his shoulder and a crowbar in his hand; there was a chance he'd be needed if Lalli was hurt, but in case of attack, he was under standing orders to "grab Fluffy and go".

As for Tuuri… well, he was her cousin. No one had even suggested leaving Tuuri behind.

All of them were well-armed with Reynir's ghost repelling runes. Not even Mikkel had managed to conjure up a snide remark before stuffing it into his pocket.

"There." Reynir pointed. Even to those who did not understand Icelandic, his meaning was clear enough.

A set of narrow footprints was clearly visible through the snow, leading under the arch of two fallen trees that leaned against each other before disappearing onto the stone floor of a wide cavern.

"Lal—" Emil started to call, but Sigrun threw an arm in front of his chest before he could rush forward.

"What are we waiting for?" Emil demanded when she shook her head. "He could be in trouble!"

"I don't like the look of this," Sigrun replied. Her voice had dropped to a whisper. "Something's not right here."

Reynir, meanwhile, had knelt down to take a closer look at the tracks. "It doesn't look like he was limping," Mikkel translated, coming up behind them while Tuuri hung back. "No signs of a struggle, either," he added as his own observation, looking at the far-too-tidy line of tracks that had led them in the _opposite_ direction from the route they'd been planning to take.

If he wasn't injured, and there was no sign of troll activity, what had stopped him from returning?

"Right." Sigrun pushed herself to her feet from where she, too, had been kneeling. "Emil, with me. The rest of you stay out here."

Nobody said a word as the two of them walked into the cave. In spite of himself, Emil felt his grip tightening on the barrel of his gun.

The first thing to hit them was the smell.

The wave of stench overpowered them the second they set foot inside of the cave, and Emil clapped a hand over his nose and mouth to keep himself from retching. "Ugh! What is—"

He stopped short, however, when he realized that Sigrun wasn't moving, and jerked back a step in fear when he realized _why_.

A nest—or rather, it _had_ been a nest. Now, though, nothing moved inside. Instead, its… _inhabitants…_ or rather what was left of them… Emil gulped. What looked like intestines were strewn across the floor. Skulls were caved in, their contents stamped to mush. The walls of the cave were painted with blood… but behind the blood, far too high for any human to reach, there were unmistakable claw marks scored into the solid stone…

"S-Sigrun?" _Don't throw up don't throw up don't throw up you can't afford to lose focus here so whatever you do just don't throw up!_ "Do trolls ever… you know… attack each other?"

"Not _usually_." Already she was sliding her dagger from its sheath. "I don't know what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure we've got ourselves a situation."

Emil swallowed. He reached for his flamethrower.

The various bits of knowledge danced around his head like the pieces of a puzzle he very much did _not_ want to put together. Sometime last night, Lalli had come to this cave. There was a set of Lalli's tracks going in, but no matching set coming out. According to Reynir, Lalli was still alive. The trolls that had previously been sheltering here were very much _not_ alive…

"Sigrun," he found himself saying, announcing his decision before he was even aware he'd made it. "Let me go in first."

Sigrun turned to look at him, startled. "And why," she asked evenly, "should I do that?"

He took a deep breath. "Because you're sick," he started, "and I'm more expendable than you are, and it's better one of us dying than both of us, and if one of us is going to die, better me than you. And…" Here, he hesitated, but he knew what he was asking of her; he owed her the whole truth. "I know Lalli better than you do," he finished. "If he needs… that is, if someone needs to talk to him… it's probably better if it's me."

For a moment, she mulled it over. Emil held his breath. If she refused, he'd abide by her decision, but if he knew Sigrun, he knew she would listen to reason, and he could only hope that his reasons were good enough…

"Okay," she said at last, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "But promise you'll give me a shout if you need help."

"I will."

With one final nod to his Captain, he pushed his way to the back of the cave.

The stench only got worse the farther back he went, and before long he couldn't take a step without his boot crunching down on bone, or sinking ever so slightly into slippery flesh or congealing blood. Of course there would have been more trolls in the back—warmer, there, and not to mention quite a bit darker. Still…

He tried not to think about it. He didn't _want_ to think about it. Even so, he could not help but notice that the carnage was thickening in a way that could not be explained by a need for shelter alone. It was almost as if they'd been clustering toward the back in a panic when they'd died… frantically scrambling to get away from an attacker that had come from the _outside…_

It wasn't until he'd reached the very back wall—a dead end—that the beam of his flashlight illuminated a slender figure, back turned to him, that was sitting hunched on the floor surrounded by several small mounds of dead trolls.

Emil didn't need to see a face to tell who it was—but even so, he approached with a caution that his conscious mind was screaming was ridiculous and wrong (this was his _friend!_ ), but which some deeper instinct insisted was necessary and would not take no for an answer. There were streaks of congealed red in the silver hair. The formerly white uniform was splattered with gore. The thin shoulders moved up, down, up, down, in a rhythm of jerky breathing that first made Emil wonder whether he was hurt after all, but then made him wonder whether the situation was far, far worse.

"Lalli…?"

* * *

He knew who it was before he even saw the light of the torch.

Of course; the idiot never had known how to take a hint. After all, why should he? It wasn't like anyone had ever told _him_ no… it wasn't like _he'd_ ever suffered the crushing losses that had defined Lalli's life from beginning to end…

He was talking now… using few words, choosing them carefully. He sounded concerned, now… stressed and worried… but they'd passed the point of no return, and now it was too little, too late.

Emil had stopped talking, but Lalli did not answer. He had nothing to say—or at least, nothing that Emil would want to hear. Seconds of silence stretched out into minutes. He heard the other man swallow. One boot, then the other, shuffled against the floor.

"Lalli, we can fix this—"

He whipped around so fast he felt the vertebrae crack in his neck, pukko in hand and a snarl across his face.

"NOW you care!?"

* * *

Sigrun had been leaning against the wall of the cave, trying to save her strength while still keeping her eyes open for any sign of danger, when she heard the shout of angry-sounding Finnish followed by Emil's startled cry.

The time for saving strength was over. Pushing herself off from the wall, she sprinted full tilt in the direction from which the shouting had come, cursing as she slipped on the carnage that covered the floor of the cave. She rounded one final bend, skidded to a halt—

—and gaped.

Lalli, the scout—the quiet, obedient, unassuming scout—was standing over Emil, who had fallen onto his rear end and was frantically trying to scoot backwards over the slippery floor. Lalli's normally near-expressionless face was twisted into a mask of rage. His eyes glowed silver. His teeth were bared in a feral snarl. His hair fluttered in a wind of his own making. As if that wasn't terrifying enough…

There, hovering behind Lalli, fangs bared, was a cat. A giant, honest-to-gods, glowing silver cat. And unlike the little fluffball they were currently harboring in the tank, this cat did _not_ look particularly friendly.

Well, at least now they knew what had made those marks on the walls.

Even as this thought crossed her mind she was running forward, hooking her hands under Emil's armpits to yank him backwards just as a paw bigger than Mikkel came down where his head had been only seconds before. The bared claws ripped furrows into the floor of the cave.

"S-Sigrun? I don't know—don't know what he's—"

"RUN!"

Thankfully, she didn't need to tell him twice. One more tug, Emil was on his feet, and then they were scrambling for the entrance of the cave, slipping on entrails, fumbling around in the dark, the light from the beams of their flashlights dancing crazily over the walls…

Mikkel nearly had to catch her when they burst outside, staggering with the sudden flash of sunlight on snow. "What happened?"

"Scout's gone crazy," she gasped, cursing the weakness of her limbs and the flush of fever creeping back into her face. "We have to—"

That was as far as she made it before the glowing-eyed scout stepped out after them—followed by the menacing silvery feline.

In that moment, Sigrun knew what she would have to do. Her fingers curled around the hilt of her dagger. It was a shame, and she didn't think she would ever forgive herself for it, but they were dealing with a very powerful and very pissed-off mage, and she had no idea what he'd be capable of if he wasn't stopped now. It was him or them. Maybe, if they were very, very lucky, she could even knock him unconscious without it killing him later…

She never even got within arm's reach of him. A silver paw saw to that, slamming against her chest and knocking her dagger out of her hand, sending her skidding backwards over the snow like a rock skipped over a pond.

A tree slamming up against her back halted her insane flight. Sigrun tried to stand, but her shaking legs gave out on her before she'd even unbent her knees halfway. An attempt to inhale produced a stab of pain through her side—busted ribs, damn. She spat blood. Must've bitten the inside of her cheek… she _hoped_ she'd only bitten the inside of her cheek. Looking up, she saw mage and cat advancing relentlessly on those still standing.

…her rifle. It was still strapped to her back. With a soft groan, Sigrun reached around, unholstered it, clicked the safety off. Better not try to stand up again—she'd take the shot from where she was. Her arms were shaking. The gun felt heavy in her hands. Her vision was beginning to blur at the edges. For all she knew, that lynx could swat away bullets as easily as it had sent her flying through the air.

Didn't matter. You fulfilled your mission or you died trying—and right now, _her_ mission was to get as much of her crew as she could out of the Silent World alive.

Even as she rested the rifle against her shoulder, she knew that without either divine intervention or an _extremely_ lucky break, she would not make the shot. The sight jiggled and jumped before her eyes. Her finger slipped from the trigger.

She had just about decided that aim or no aim, she'd better pull the trigger before someone got killed, when the world lit up around her. The snow was glowing. Not only that, it was glowing in a _pattern_. Looking to its center, Sigrun saw a figure, blue-cloaked, arms up, long red braid streaming out behind him.

_Reynir._

* * *

"Why are you doing this?" he yelled. His words were nearly swallowed by the rush of magic in Lalli's ears and the rushing of blood in his head, but for some reason he didn't care to contemplate, he could understand everything the Icelander said.

The _one_ person he'd least wanted to talk to, who somehow always found a way to shove his way into Lalli's space regardless.

Now… now he was shielding the others— _all_ of the others… protecting them in ways that Lalli had never been able to, despite all of his hard work and training…

_You don't deserve this power._

"We need to be working together! Come on… we can put those ghosts to rest…"

_All my life, I've done nothing but try and try and try…_

"Lalli, I know you don't want to do this!"

_…and here you come in with your happy memories and your happy family and your happy life, and you're not even trained, and you run right over me and you don't even notice!_

"You know NOTHING about me!"

The paw of the lynx came down on top of him. Instinctively, Reynir threw his arms up to shield himself, and it worked—the blow merely sent him skidding backward several meters rather than leaving him a bloody smear atop the snow. It didn't matter. Even Reynir could only take so many doses of raw spiritual power, and then—

"Lalli…"

He looked away from the braided nuisance. There, standing in front of him, having approached while he'd been distracted by the rest of the battle, was the one person who should have been able to calm his rage, yet whose presence now only made him inexplicably angrier…

"Lalli," his cousin said softly. "Lalli, it's going to be okay…"

"Stop _saying_ that!" He was no longer shouting. By contrast, his voice had now dropped to a deadly, angry hissed whisper. "All my life, you've been telling me what to feel because what I felt wasn't convenient for _you_. You didn't listen to me when I said I didn't want to come, you didn't listen to me when I said we shouldn't go to Odense, you got infected because _you_ got us into this mess, and then you wouldn't even let me _grieve_ for you! So _stop_ telling me it's going to be okay when it's not!"

Tuuri gasped. There were tears running down her face. Nevertheless, she took a step closer.

"You're right." She stepped forward. Her arms went around his skinny body. "Lalli, I'm sor—"

Those who were watching the scene unfold after picking themselves up from where they'd been thrown saw the two cousins embrace and the lynx vanish. From a distance, it looked like a heartfelt hug—until Tuuri fell one way and Lalli collapsed the other.

Emil and Mikkel, who'd both come out of the battle relatively unscathed, were the first to reach them. Once they got close enough, it was immediately clear what had happened: each had a matching stain of red spreading over their back. A further search revealed Lalli's pukko, its point expertly buried in one of Tuuri's lungs, and Sigrun's dagger, which had been driven less expertly but no less effectively through the center of Lalli's back.

Lalli was still alive, his thin chest rising and falling and every breath coming out in a wet gurgle. Emil got to him first, gently easing a hand beneath his head and resting the other over Lalli's own where it lay in the snow. He turned to Mikkel, who'd just finished checking Tuuri for a pulse (Emil didn't need to ask to know that he'd found none, nor did he need to hear the answer to the question that he nevertheless still needed to ask). "Is there anything you can…?"

"No." Mikkel was already laying Tuuri's head back into the snow—gently, even though there was no longer any need to be gentle. Nevertheless, he opened his bag, and came out with a syringe. "By my estimate, he doesn't have more than a few minutes—but at the very least I can make those few minutes easier."

Emil didn't answer. Instead, he did the only thing he could, and held Lalli while the needle went into his skin, while his face relaxed from clenched pain into something resembling peaceful sleep, until finally his gurgling breaths faltered and his body lay stiff and cold in the snow.

Emil stood, and wiped his eyes. He looked at the carnage around him. Reynir was on his feet, cradling one arm against his chest as he limped over to Mikkel—the latter had moved on to Sigrun, who had so far not moved from the base of the tree where she'd been thrown, and was advising her to "stay down". It made sense—as callous as it seemed, it was only right to devote one's time and resources to those who were still within reach of help. Still, Emil could not help but spare one last look for two of the last remaining members of an ill-fated family, dead by each other's hand as they lay in their final resting place on the cold, uncaring ground of a distant foreign land.

"I'll come back and bury you tomorrow," he promised them— _both_ of them—as he retrieved Sigrun's dagger and bent to place Lalli's pukko in his hand. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Finally!_ I'm _finally_ finished with this monster!
> 
> The blame goes to A Certain Evil Enabler for suggesting that recent events might become a breaking point for Lalli, and lead to him turning into a kade.


	21. An Unhealthy Obsession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preparing for a trek on the foot through the Silent World would have been hard enough... except _now_ , the crew also has to deal with the fact that _one_ of them has developed a strange new craving for human flesh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[An Unhealthy Obsession](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THRtKGX-czY)" by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra
> 
> **Setting:** Present day
> 
> **Warnings:** Mentions of cannibalism. Also... be advised that even though it's got a light and humorous tone, the song _is_ about stalking.
> 
> **Other Tags:** Spawn of the comments section, it's Talimee's fault

_She_ didn't have a problem with what she was doing—but she knew that if any of them caught her, _they_ would. Better to make sure not to get caught, then.

She was _hungry_. She could no longer deny the gnawing, _insistent_ hunger in her belly. In that, she was in luck: right here with her were other soft warm bodies ripe for the taking. She needn't even risk herself by going outside.

The dilemma in that, of course, was that she _liked_ everyone else here. Even though her mouth began to water uncontrollably at the mere thought of the taste of fresh meat and hot blood on her tongue, she didn't actually want to _kill_ any of them. Well, she thought, there was a solution to that too. They'd all been so nice to her ever since they'd met; she was sure they wouldn't mind donating just a _little_ of themselves to sate the ever-growing demands of her hunger.

The problem, of course, was getting one of them alone. The living quarters here were crammed, and it was exceedingly rare for any _two_ people to obtain true privacy, let alone one in isolation.

The obvious answer, of course, was the scout who slept during the day, and who was more often than not left to doze in complete isolation while the others set up camp. She hovered over him, mouth gaping wide—but a latent sense of kinship stopped her. He might have been treating her very badly lately (she bristled at the thought of the way he'd avoided her when he could and snubbed her when he couldn't), but he was still one of her own. She might have given in to her baser instincts, but she hadn't yet sunk _that_ low.

That left all of the others. Which one would be the easiest to reach, the easiest to subdue—and, most importantly, the tastiest?

Reynir, she dismissed out of hand. It was a pity, because she had no doubt he _would_ be the tastiest, what with his tender flesh that she was sure would dissolve oh-so-perfectly in her mouth… but Reynir was always on alert now, always guarded. By this point he wasn't even going to the _bathroom_ by himself, and she was forced to sit in stewing frustration at the sight of someone who would otherwise be so _easy_ to sneak up on now being hovered over by a bulky Dane with crowbar in hand. As strong as this new urge was, it didn't yet override her instincts of self-preservation, and no way was she letting herself get within arm's reach of _that_.

That left the others. Mikkel was out as well; he had already nearly caught her once, and was too suspicious already. He'd been watching her _far_ too closely lately, and she wasn't even going to consider the risk of tipping _him_ off.

Late at night, after Lalli had run off to scout their next day's route and everyone else had gone to sleep, she hunkered down and watched them with her superior night vision. Emil was on guard, but as long as she was quiet, his attention was easy to avoid—he wasn't yet experienced enough to be on the alert for threats from within as well as from without. Slowly, she crept up on those who remained. She _had_ to have it, and she had to have it tonight. The new craving within her wouldn't take no for an answer.

There—the smell of blood. She raised her head from where she was pressed low to the ground, concealing herself behind Mikkel's turned back, and sniffed. So fresh and strong that it had to be coming from an open wound.

Of course. Sigrun. She'd been feeling worse lately, and when they'd made camp that afternoon, Mikkel had opened up her arm to allow some of the infection to drain. It wasn't as good as _fresh_ blood, but still… flesh was flesh, and she was _starving_.

Slowly, she crept forward, taking care not to make a sound. Sigrun and Mikkel were both fast asleep. Even better: Sigrun slept with her limbs splayed out around her, making her target all the easier to reach. Her mouth was watering harder than ever, but it wouldn't do to get impatient and make a mistake, not when she was this close. Finally, though, she was there. She hunched over. She opened her mouth—

—only for a pair of strong arms to close around her midsection, and drag her forcibly away despite all of her struggles.

* * *

"She's doing _this_ again."

Reynir held the squirming, spitting cat close against his body with a puzzled expression; she'd taken a few swipes at him, but even her claws couldn't get through the thick layers of clothing. Even so, he wouldn't be able to hold onto her for much longer, though at least he'd caught her in the act _before_ she'd managed to actually bite someone—again.

"I don't understand what is _wrong_ with that cat," Mikkel muttered, blinking awake, before explaining the situation to Sigrun, who'd also woken with a grumpy expression.

"Okay, that's it." Yeah, Sigrun was in a bad mood. "I don't care _how_ useful she is at spotting trolls, from now on we're keeping her on a leash. Before she actually _eats_ one of us."

"That is highly unlikely—"

"Yeah, well, I'm not taking chances." She flopped back down onto her bedroll. "Because it's either that, or we eat _her—_ and let me tell you, I would _really_ like some fresh meat."

Nobody had anything to say to that. So, Kitty was carted off to a life of imprisonment, her plans sadly foiled once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Between what's going on in-comic and all of the grimdark stuff I've been writing lately, I _might_ have needed to blow off a bit of steam.
> 
> Credit for seeding this idea goes to Talimee for suggesting that I should be doing a villainous!Kitty AU on top of everything else, and then after Kitty bit Tuuri someone in the comments section had to go and joke that "Welp, the cat's tasted human blood, there'll be no stopping her now", so of _course_ I had to take that and run with it. I hope you're happy with yourselves.
> 
> Also, after spending nearly a week on the past chapter I managed to crank this out in a single morning. Blah.


	22. A View to a Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emil had _so many plans_ for how this mission was going to go. He was going to be a hero. He was going to come home rich and famous. He was going to make a good first impression on all of his new crewmates.
> 
> ...oh yes, and he was not going to fall head over heels for his commanding officer. Too bad he forgot to include that little detail on the list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A View to a Kill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPj_ieoUju8)" by Duran Duran
> 
> **Setting:** Present day (pre-Odense)
> 
> **Characters:** Emil
> 
> **Relationship:** Very, _very_ one-sided Emil- >Sigrun
> 
> **Warnings:** Some nonsexual nudity, awkward and uncomfortable situations
> 
> **Other Tags:** One-sided crush, Emil is a Perfect Gentleman and ends up tying himself in complete knots over it, Sigrun is totally oblivious and inadvertently makes things worse, brief mentions of inappropriate erections, lots and lots of fire metaphors, hey it's Emil what did you expect

For most of his life, Emil had had _plans_. True, they'd sometimes gone awry (the family fortune disappearing almost overnight was _not_ something he'd ever accounted for) and there'd been a few setbacks (public school was _never_ going to provide him a path to the fortune and fame that he wanted) and he'd had to make adjustments over the years, but still, the basic outline of things had always remained more or less intact. First, make himself desirable. (When his family had still had money, that had provided desirability enough, but over time he'd had to revise that to restoring his fortune _and_ obtaining fame, just as a backup. No matter, he was flexible.) Then, find a nice woman—someone worthy of his station—and get married. (Revising that statement to nice man _or_ woman had had less to do with his circumstances than with his body's insistence on what it wanted, but that still didn't change the basic premise of the thing.) _Then_ , once he was financially secure and socially stable, maybe get started on a family.

Those things. In _that_ order.

Somehow, none of his plans to acquire fame and fortune by braving the Silent World had included getting in well over his head, facing _actual_ death against _actual_ trolls, having every single one of their carefully-laid plans fall to pieces… and falling head over heels for his commanding officer.

"No," he told himself, staring his own face down in the mirror the morning after their first raid, having woken up early from a dream in which the aftermath had ended not with him heaving his guts up, but with Sigrun pulling his face up close against hers, the others had vanished, and then they'd— "No, no, no, you cannot afford this right now, you have to be able to focus—"

"Can't afford what?" Mikkel asked, coming up behind him with the washbasin in hand.

"Nothing!" he yelped, before hastily leaning in to fix his hair. Mikkel rolled his eyes.

It was just a fluke, that was all. Too much adrenaline in his system. Too much novelty at working with someone who actually seemed to _like_ him… but Sigrun liked everyone. There was nothing special about him, or them, and he was just getting himself more worked up than was necessary over the after-battle crash. That was it.

…after several days, he was forced to accept that his feelings were _not_ just a fluke.

He wouldn't call it love. Even Emil was old enough to know that they hadn't known each other long enough, or well enough, for him to use _that_ word so blithely. Even so… it was still something more than a crush.

It took him a few days more to realize that Sigrun _did_ seem to think that he was something special… even if it wasn't _quite_ in the way that he wanted.

"Right-hand warrior," she called him. Well, okay, she had a nickname for everyone… but somehow, he thought that "right-hand warrior" meant something _more_. Even so, Emil still made an effort to temper his hopes… until he finally recognized the thing she did for him that she didn't do for _anyone_ else.

She called him by his _name_ , far more often than she ever did for anyone else. Tuuri was "Stubby" or "Fuzz-Head". Lalli was "Twig". Mikkel was "Farm Boy" or (after he'd pissed her off) "Mutinist". Reynir was "Troll Bait" when they first found him, "Freckles" after she'd calmed down. Sure, Emil was "right-hand warrior"… but he was also simply "Emil".

It was, Emil knew, because he was the one who worked the most closely with Sigrun in the field, and thus the one she'd have to rely on the most. As unofficial as this mission was, they were both military, and the situation was about as unromantic as you can get… but that didn't stop the warm pleasure from licking his insides like flames at the thought of it.

Still, as the mission went on, he couldn't help but chide himself for picking the worst possible circumstances, because Emil was _really really bad_ at hiding things. Especially in close quarters… far, far too close quarters…

Going through decon in plain sight of others had never been much of an issue for him before. Then again, Emil had never had such persistent dirty thoughts about one of his teammates before. Worse, it didn't seem to be an issue for Sigrun _at all_ , and she would casually shrug out of her uniform without even giving him a chance to look away, and _Gods, I'm so sorry!_ he thought, throwing an arm in front of his face while hastily rushing back into the tank with some garbled excuse about checking to make sure Lalli was awake, maybe he hadn't seen everything even though he'd tried not to see _anything_ but gods, he'd still seen _something_ , but he hadn't _meant_ to, and he was such a horrible person for thinking that maybe he wouldn't have minded seeing more.

He didn't know whether to be relieved or horrified that nobody seemed to have noticed. Relieved, because it meant that nobody else knew his dirty secret. Horrified because… well, if nobody else knew his dirty secret, they were going to put him in situations that made it even _worse_.

Reynir was having yet another fit of hysterics—about what, Emil didn't know and didn't care, because he personally had much more important things to worry about. Like the fact that Mikkel had given in and gone back into the tank when the braided nuisance had steadfastly refused to take "No" or "Wait a few minutes" for an answer, and ordered _Emil_ to help Sigrun finish up with her decon bath.

He was going to _murder_ Reynir. He didn't care about how much trouble he'd be in; next time they were alone together he was going to smother that annoying waste of food in his sleep.

"Well." Sigrun shrugged, and leaned forward in the tub, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "Back's not gonna scrub itself."

Emil swallowed, and focused on keeping his eyes firmly on the back of her neck as he knelt behind the tub. He took a brief moment to wonder whether he could manage to stuff a good-sized snowball down his pants without anybody noticing, but then rejected the idea out of hand; while it might do the job of… _dissuading…_ his body from the reaction it was currently having, in the end it would look as if he'd wet himself—which might hide his secret, but still be just as embarrassing.

…he tried not to think about the implications that he was seriously considering doing it _anyway_.

Instead, he forced himself to focus on Sigrun's back, and _nothing but her back_ , as he scrubbed her down as quickly as he could while still doing a thorough job. Still, he could not help but hesitate a little as his fingers brushed up against patches of rougher skin: old scars, the kind he guessed you got when a troll _really_ ripped into you, and he couldn't help but wonder how long she'd been fighting that she seemed to have so _many_ of them.

He tried not to ask. He really, really tried. Still, she must have felt his eyes on her, and turned her head slightly with a bit of a smirk, and started recounting the epic battles _anyway_ , while Emil worked mechanically, while he dropped the sponge and murmured that he was done, and while she stood up out of the water _without warning_ and Emil turned away so fast he put a crick in his neck.

Yeah, Reynir was definitely going to die… just as soon as Emil managed to find some excuse to wander off to a private enough spot to stuff some snow into his pants.

_Stupid_ , he told himself, over and over again, as he struggled with the problem of not letting anyone know what was going on in his pants—he couldn't even use his _hand_ to give himself some relief, because if he did he wouldn't be able to stop picturing his commanding officer, and then he'd feel guilty about that, and… _Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ Why had he had to go and do something so asinine as being attracted to her?

Sigrun… Sigrun was _amazing_. She'd been through fire again and again, and she'd survived it every time. Emil, by contrast, was an inexperienced rookie who she was only training because she'd somehow become convinced he was something he wasn't.

He sighed. Even supposing she was right about him, and he had all the potential she actually thought he did, and that he somehow managed to live up to it before he got eaten by something, he still didn't stand a chance. Sigrun was a good thirteen years older than him, and rank stood between them. As far as she was concerned, he was still a baby and always would be, and even supposing that by some miracle she did feel some of the same spark that he did, he knew that she would never act on it, nor allow him to do so. It would not only be wrong, it would be dangerous, and extra danger was the _last_ thing they could afford on a mission like this.

Carefully, Emil held the flame inside of him, examined it… and let it burn out and turn to ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much as the idea of Sigrun actually screwing around with any of her subordinates squicks me out... I could totally see her underlings developing puppy crushes on her.
> 
> Also, you can probably expect a lot of Alternate Reality stories and pre-Odense stuff from me for the near future, because as far as recent events go... I just can't go there yet.


	23. A Warrior's Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easy to feel alone and disenfranchised in an era where one's talents aren't wanted. So when Sigrun finds an outlet, it feels like a dream come true... so much so that she doesn't notice the slow downward spiral that's tearing her life apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Warrior's Call](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSmtHBMjXLU)" by Volbeat
> 
> **Setting:** Crossover (Fight Club)
> 
> **Characters:** Sigrun
> 
> **Relationship:** Sigrun  & Solveig
> 
> **Warnings:** General violence, lots of really self-destructive behavior, brief mentions of medical squicks, brief allusions to (though no actual instances of) domestic abuse
> 
> **Other Tags:** Disenfranchisement, tough love, exploration of some of the characters' worst sides

Some people, they said, were born in the wrong era.

Sigrun had never had a high opinion of philosophy—what good was there in doing nothing but sitting around and _thinking_ all day—but that, she could agree with. The time she'd been born into just wasn't _right_ for her. Even a generation ago, her mother had once said, you could get a decent job whether you had a degree or not, but nowadays, everyone wanted you to have a college education and five years' experience—and Sigrun hadn't even been smart enough to _apply_ to college, let alone graduate.

So here she was, scraping together a living through dead-end job after dead-end job, trying not to think of how much _better_ her life would have been if she'd instead been born into a time that actually _appreciated_ her talents. The Wild West, ancient Rome, a zombie apocalypse… really she wasn't picky. Just anywhere— _anywhere—_ but here.

She was going to live out a pointless existence, be spent early, and then die. No hope of glory. No hope of fulfilling her dreams.

Maybe _that_ was why she started doing what she did.

When she was bored and she'd had a few, it wasn't overly hard to get involved in a bar fight (nor indeed to start one, if that's what it took). Unfortunately, it _also_ wasn't hard to get kicked _out_ of the bar right when things were just starting to get good.

It was while on one of these drunken binges that she discovered… well, _them_. Mostly men, a handful of women, crowded together in secret to act out some of their more primal urges. They met in dark alleyways, vacant lots, and condemned buildings where only the junkies would see them. There, they were free to _really_ let loose and do all the things society was constantly telling them that civilized people weren't allowed to do.

The first time that Sigrun stumbled into their midst, very few people looked at her twice. After ascertaining that she wasn't about the go running to the cops, the only attention anyone paid to her was to shove her into the center of the ring after she'd watched a few rounds, because it was her first night and that was one of the rules—not _the_ first rule, but one of them. That first night, she staggered home a little bit punch-drunk in addition to the more traditional method, and spent a few bleary minutes the next morning thinking it was a dream until she woke up enough to notice her scraped knuckles and the blood on her pillow.

The next night, she went back again.

As a child, she'd always fantasized about becoming a knight or a gladiator or a Viking when she grew up. A warrior: someone who could fight and win glorious battles, whose story would be told for generations upon generations after her death. She'd been able to have none of those things: nowadays a lifetime of fighting and killing was considered primitive, barbaric. Fight Club was… well, it wasn't exactly the sort of heroism you read about in the stories. But it _was_ an outlet. It was a place she wasn't judged, where she could be sure that she was _appreciated_ and _valued_. For what she was—not for what anyone else wanted her to be. After her first few rounds, it was the highlight of her days. By the time she'd been in it a month, it was the _only_ thing that she looked forward to.

Sigrun was fired from her job. Then, after a few weeks' worth of pressure from her mother, she found another job and was promptly fired from that one as well.

She didn't care. For the first time in her life, she actually felt _alive_.

What was a _job_ to her anyway, she wondered as her fist collided hard with her opponent's cheek, as she hardened her stomach and exhaled as a brace for the blow to her gut. The only job she could get was as a grunt, push this, lift that, smile at the customers like you _didn't_ want to plant your fist right in the middle of their snobby entitled faces. What kind of a life was she expected to lead, just to be able to eat?

"Are you quite sure there isn't anything you'd like to talk about?"

Sigrun sighed. Why she had to keep getting _this_ nurse she had no idea, but he was way too observant for his own good when it came to things like black eyes and bloody noses, but she'd been getting carried away more and more often lately, and iodine and Band-Aids would only get you so far.

"I'm _fine_ ," she insisted once again, hoping that this time he might _take a hint_. She'd stopped making excuses; there were only so many times you could claim you'd fought off a mugger, or fought off a bear, or heroically scaled a third-story building to rescue a lost kitten and fallen off the side, before _some people_ decided it just wasn't good enough for them anymore, and stopped believing you altogether.

"Very well." Even so, he handed her a pamphlet she wasn't going to read, even if there _wasn't_ much else for her to do while her entire forearm was getting wrapped in plaster.

In the end, Sigrun gritted her teeth through his instructions, and made an appointment to come back in a couple of months to get the thing _off_ , and hoped that having one of her arms wrapped up in a heavy cast wouldn't do too much damage to her chances in the ring.

Fortunately, as it turned out a heavy arm cast actually made a _really good_ weapon.

Unfortunately, that nosy nurse was far from the _only_ one to notice that something was going on.

"I want the truth, Sigrun." The first time, her mother had bought her story of the bloody nose as being due to a reckless spill on her bike (she'd even driven the bike off the road on purpose, both to get it believably banged up and so she wouldn't _actually_ have to lie to her mother); the next few times deceiving her had not been _nearly_ so easy, and after several months' worth of Sigrun simply avoiding her when she had obvious injuries her mother had called her over, refused to take no for an answer, and sat her down at the table with a steaming mug of tea in front of them both. Sigrun simply crossed her arms, and looked away. Her mother wouldn't _understand_ the truth even if she did tell her.

"Are you seeing anyone?" her mother started, with a look on her face that said she was going to get to the bottom of this or someone _else_ would end up getting hurt.

"No."

"I'm not just asking whether you're in a relationship. Are you dating, or having sex, even casually…"

"I told you," Sigrun interrupted, speaking through gritted teeth. " _No_."

For a very long moment, her mother eyed her, steadily, before seeming to take her word for it and giving a brief nod. That hardly meant the interrogation was over, however, and Sigrun just _knew_ she was going to keep asking questions until she was satisfied, or until they reached some sort of break.

"Are you having dealings with any sort of organized crime?"

Sigrun, who'd finally decided to take a drink in the hopes of a distraction that would make the whole thing just a little less painful, nearly choked on her tea. " _What!?_ "

Her mother remained completely unmoved. "Answer the question, Sigrun."

" _No_ , I'm not involved with the stupid mob!" Seriously, why would she even _think—_

"Are you doing drugs?"

"No."

"Are you in debt?"

"Mom, for the last time, there's nothing wrong with me!"

"You lose two jobs in two weeks, and then come home with two black eyes and a broken arm? That's hardly 'nothing'."

"Seriously? I have _one_ bad spill and a couple of lousy bosses—"

"From what I've seen, it's more like a bad spill every other day, and you not bothering to show up to your job more than two days in a row." She stopped, took a few deep breaths, and met Sigrun's eyes across the table. "Sigrun. _What is going on?_ "

For a few minutes, the silence was so thick one could have heard a pin drop. Then, however, Sigrun shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."

Her mother crossed her arms. " _What_ wouldn't I understand?"

Sigrun, however, had said all she was willing to say on the matter. Instead, she set her mostly-full cup of tea back down on the table, pushed her chair back, and stood.

"Sigrun."

She had a hand on the doorknob when her mother's voice stopped her. In spite of herself, in spite of her plans to simply walk out and leave because this conversation was _over_ , she stopped and waited, and turned her head slightly to hear what her mother had to say.

"Whatever is going on, we're willing to help you in whatever way we can. But as long as you continue to do whatever it is you're doing, you needn't come back."

Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't really _mean_ that… but she did. Her mother wouldn't say something like this unless she was serious.

That didn't stop her from shrugging, opening the door, and walking away, keeping her eyes forward so she didn't have to see her mother's face. Maybe someday she'd understand… but not now. For the first time she could remember, Sigrun's life felt like it actually _meant_ something. She wasn't going to give that up—not even for the sake of her family.

That night, she threw herself into the battle with a wild abandon, volunteering for every fight. Every contact of her fists with soft flesh, and every jarring blow against her own body, was an affirmation of life.

Later, sitting on the cold ground, leaning against a hard wall, and trying to ignore her rumbling stomach as she wrapped her bruised knuckles, Sigrun thought back to that morning, and had to fight the sudden inexplicable urge to cry.

It wasn't _fair—_ she shouldn't have had to make this choice. Still, she had made it, and here she was, and she couldn't go back or regret her decision.

Even when she lost her apartment because she could no longer pay the rent, it was hard to find regret—there was a satisfaction in living rough, and Sigrun simply shrugged and settled in with the junkies. Plenty of free shelter, if one knew where to look. Plenty of time to spend doing what she loved, with her own kindred spirits. For the first time in her life, she truly felt like the warrior she was always meant to be.

…even if she was slowly losing everything else.

Their fights were all bare knuckles; no weapons allowed. Even so, during one battle with an opponent who though significantly smaller than she was was unexpectedly lithe and quick, Sigrun got thrown into a wall—and the pile of junk that was leaning against it. It took her a few minutes after dragging herself out of it to notice the pain, or the steady trickle of blood that was seeping through her sleeve.

When she went to the hospital to have it stitched up, she somehow ended up with the same nurse as always, but this time she didn't even _try_ to answer his questions. He thought she had a boyfriend who was beating up on her, fine. Let him think it. It wasn't like anything _she_ said was going to change his mind.

Several weeks later, and it still hadn't healed.

She shouldn't have been surprised. The doctor had been very clear as to the importance of regular dressing changes, and of keeping the wound properly clean—but it was impossible to keep anything clean in this environment, and even basic medical supplies were now out of her reach.

Whatever. She was young and healthy. Whatever it was that was wrong, Sigrun was strong enough to beat this on her own.

The kid was young, and Sigrun didn't need to have come here every night to tell that it was his first time. Chubby, soft, wearing expensive clothes… and probably far too pretty for his own good, once he lost a bit of that extra weight. Rich boy, probably, out slumming for the night.

Sigrun never would be able to explain how she reacted next.

His nervous swallow as they stepped into the ring indicated that he had no idea what he was doing, and she could see the fear in his eyes as he looked her up and down and realized how thoroughly she outclassed him: a good head taller than him and all lean muscle, the rainbow of old bruises splashed across her pale skin marking out her veteran status more clearly than any uniform.

Rather than inspiring sympathy, his fear only spurred her on.

The usual cheers turned to animal bloodlust as she was on top of him, having knocked him to the ground where she began punching him again and again, her face heated and her head swimming with a maelstrom of half-formed thoughts that were aggressive as they were incoherent.

Later, she'd thank any higher powers that existed that her own body gave out on her before she could follow her bloodthirsty instincts to their logical conclusion. Had her arm not flared with pain, and her vision suddenly blurred, she would have beaten him to death, and no one else in that room would have stopped her. As it was, though, the sudden rush of weakness gave him just enough of an opening to plant a boot in her stomach and frantically scramble away, and the break was enough for the others to come to their senses and realize how close they'd come to disaster. The last thing she was aware of was someone shouting to call an ambulance, before she passed out with her cheek pressed into the cold floor.

* * *

When she woke, the first thing she noticed was that she felt awful. The next thing she noticed was that she was no longer in a condemned building, but in a hospital bed with an IV in her arm in addition to… _something else_ that was thankfully covered by fresh bandages, but she could still see the end of a tube peeking out. Oh yes, and her mother standing in the doorway.

"That boy will live," she said without preamble, and the sheer _calmness_ of her voice only made things that much worse. "But he's going to be scarred for life—in more ways than one."

At that, Sigrun buried her face in her hands—well, one of her hands, seeing as her bad arm didn't want to move—as much to avoid having to look at the disappointment in her mother's face as for the gesture itself. "Thank all the gods," she whispered.

The interrogation didn't happen immediately—"We are going to have a _long talk_ once you're feeling better," her mother had said—but somehow, Sigrun still ended up spilling some of it right then and there. Her mother only nodded, and brushed her hair from her forehead, and told her to rest now, there would be a time to start fixing her mistakes, but right now, she needed to rest.

Sepsis, the doctors said. Too much time for an untreated infection to stew in an unclean wound. She needed rest, clean dressings, antibiotics, time.

It was one mistake that she couldn't regret. After all, it had saved her from making a far worse one.

She did heal. It took her some time, after she'd gone so long without regular meals and sleeping in the cold and dirt, but by the time she was released, the last of her bruises had faded, and the seeping wound had closed and begun to mend.

Her mother was as good as her word. After driving her home, she gave Sigrun one day to get settled back into the room she'd slept in as a child—but the next morning, she was waiting at the breakfast table with two mugs of tea and a serious expression, and Sigrun felt her stomach lurch at the thought of the explaining she would have to do. Still, she owed at least that much, and after all that time she had spent playing the warrior, the least she could do was not be a coward.

The disappointment was not easy to take—nor was explaining what exactly she had been up to and why. Somehow, everything sounded so _stupid_ now that she was trying to put it into words.

"We weren't just bored," she managed at last. "We were… _unsatisfied_. Most of us felt as if our lives didn't mean anything, like our best years were being wasted, and at least that gave us a little bit of meaning."

Her mother made it clear that she would be expected to make up for the wrongs she'd done others, in whatever way she could. She also wouldn't let Sigrun not take care of herself—she made her eat regular meals, and take her medications, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, and helped her change the dressings on her arm until it was healed in full and she was left with nothing more than a jagged pink scar.

Then, it was time for the _really_ hard part.

The neighborhood he lived in was as affluent as she had expected, all huge houses and manicured gardens, and Sigrun wondered why _he_ of all people had felt the need. Still, she rang the doorbell, and stepped back, and braced herself for his wince when he recognized her, and for the scarring that was still visible on his face even after so much time.

" _When you owe someone an apology,_ " her mother had said, "you _are the one who has a debt to pay. The person you've wronged doesn't owe you anything—not forgiveness, not even to hear you out._ " So she said her piece—and gods, it was hard, forcing that out—before turning to leave, knowing that there was nothing to be gained by standing here as if she expected something from him and making them both uncomfortable.

She'd barely made it down the first two steps when he surprised her by inviting her inside.

He was young, to own all of this all by his lonesome. Still, she could see no sign of his parents or any other guardians as they sat down at the table for tea and cookies, and she wondered how lonely he must be that the person who'd almost killed him in a fit of animal abandon would seem like good company.

"Why aren't you angrier?" Sigrun asked at last, setting her delicate china cup carefully down on the delicate glass table. The place made her antsy; she felt she couldn't so much as turn around without having to worry about breaking something she'd never be able to pay for.

"Is there a point?" Emil—that was the kid's name—asked in turn. "I did something stupid and got in over my head, and it's not like hating you is going to change anything that happened."

There wasn't a whole lot to say to that. Sigrun sipped her tea.

"Look," she said at last, when they were down to crumbs and dregs and drumming their fingers nervously on the table because they'd run out of excuses not to talk. "I know there's no way to take back what I did. But is there anything that I _can_ do?"

"Not for me, no." He smiled a bit—softly, and it transformed his whole face in spite of the scarring. There was definitely a story behind how he could look so sappy while talking about the night he'd nearly been killed—the night _she'd_ nearly killed him, she reminded herself—but Sigrun wasn't going to ask. "But I'm sure there's _something_ you can do that's worthwhile."

Something worthwhile… like helping other people just like her, on the same downward spiral that she'd been on, before they destroyed themselves—or someone else.

"I'm sure that there is," she agreed, before quietly finishing her tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fun little fact a lot of cinemagoers seem to miss: Fight Club is a _deconstruction_.
> 
> I did exercise some degree of artistic license to get Sigrun into that. But yes, I could totally see her getting into this sort of self-destructive spiral if she didn't have some sort of healthy and approved outlet for her energy and warrior spirit - and the really scary part is that this is one of the _better_ scenarios that I could come up with.
> 
> I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending, as I wasn't quite sure where to go with it or what would provide real closure.


	24. An X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to carry on, when there's nothing but an empty space where one of your own used to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A X](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hL9qV-0Z5w)" by Thomas Lemmer & Sine (yes it's supposed to be a Roman numeral and I cheated, X is an impossible letter, okay?)
> 
> **Setting:** Present day
> 
> **Characters:** The crew... minus one
> 
> **Warnings:** Constant mentions of Tuuri's death, suicidal thoughts
> 
> **Other Tags:** Grief/mourning, a few hefty doses of self-blame

It was never easy, losing a teammate.

It wasn't Sigrun's first time, and if she survived this trip she was sure it wouldn't be her last, but no matter how many times it happened that never made it any easier. All the worse, especially, when you knew it was your fault.

So many things she could have done differently. So many ways that Tuuri might have lived.

Still, you did whatever you still could do and pushed on, and made everyone else do the same, because when you were a Captain, even if you'd lost someone the most important thing was to cut your losses and get the _living_ home. So she pushed: through pain and cold and fever and suddenly-stubborn crewmates. Even if not _everyone_ lived, she'd sooner shove her own dagger through her throat than give up on those who still had a chance.

* * *

Again. It had happened _again_.

All of that training, work, caution, and in the end he'd been as powerless to stop it as he'd been when he was eight. If only he'd been a few seconds faster. If only he and Tuuri had never gone on this stupid mission. If only they'd never had to leave Saimaa. If only—!

He didn't go to see Onni. It was too dangerous, and he didn't want to know what Onni would say to him for failing to keep his sister safe.

…as a matter of fact, Lalli couldn't find it in him to do much of anything anymore. The one person who was worth most to him on this mission was _gone_ , and he'd already proven himself incapable of protecting anyone. This team would be better off without him, so what would be the point?

He'd see them back to the pickup point. However badly he had failed, he owed them at least that much. After that, though… after that there wouldn't be any more reason for him to go on with them. Or to go on at all.

* * *

_This couldn't have happened._

This wasn't _supposed_ to happen. They were supposed to come back famous. They were supposed to sell the books they'd found and get rich. It was supposed to be a false alarm, a scare they'd all laugh about at their reunions years down the road. They were supposed to find a miracle, that cure they'd gone after, something, _anything_. In a world where even _magic_ was real after all, how could something as simple as a cure for the Rash still remain so far out of their reach?

When he thought about what he'd said, Emil felt sick. He'd thought they'd been in some kind of _story_ , like the fantasies he'd used to enjoy when he was a kid. They were the heroes of their own story, right? No matter how bad it looked, somehow, he'd been convinced that they'd come out of it okay. Mikkel hadn't seemed worried, Sigrun hadn't seemed worried, _Tuuri herself_ hadn't seemed worried… really, he'd thought that Lalli had just been getting gloomy over an unlikely ghost of a _possibility_ , nothing more.

He'd been such an ass. No wonder he didn't have any friends.

Over and over again, he thought he should find some way to apologize. He didn't think he'd ever master Lalli's language and Lalli still only spoke a few words of his, but that had never stopped them before. He'd just have to ask Tuur—

Then, he remembered.

Emil had not only managed to lose a good friend, he'd made things that much worse for Lalli. At this point, he couldn't even _try_ to make it up to him—even if his tentative attempts to approach him hadn't been rebuffed, Emil no longer trusted himself to open his mouth and not say the wrong thing.

So he plodded along, and did whatever Sigrun told him to do, and tried to spend as much time as he could not thinking about anything.

Right now, the only thing he wanted was to get home and get out of this nightmare—except somehow, he knew that no matter how much time passed or how far he walked, the nightmare was never going to end.

* * *

He'd been having a normal conversation with her only _yesterday_.

She'd been _right there_. They'd been chatting a bit, nothing important, enjoying a game of cards each on their own side of the door…

The last time he'd spoken to her, it had been in the wake of what had sounded like a brief scuffle on the other side of the tank. That must have been when she'd realized, he knew in hindsight. She'd run down to the sea within _minutes_ of him calling through the door to ask whether she was okay.

What had he been _thinking?_ Of _course_ she hadn't been okay. What was the last thing he'd said to her, the last time they'd had a real conversation? To be honest, Reynir couldn't even remember.

Mikkel had stuck his head in, briefly, just long enough to tell him to barricade himself in the tank and keep his mask on. Reynir, because he knew how dangerous the Silent World was and he wanted to live, had done as told, put his mask on, and tried to go back to drawing his staves on the tents… only to find that he could no longer focus.

This was just like that time a troll had gotten close enough to _touch_ him, and Tuuri had locked him into the office because she hadn't been sure whether he'd been infected _either_ , and he'd spent what had felt like hours but was probably only a few minutes curled up in a corner wondering what they were going to tell his parents before the others had come back in and Mikkel had told him he was at no risk. Or that time they'd moved on, and left half of the crew behind, and Tuuri had stopped on the tracks against orders, and they'd sat there tense and not speaking while the sun sank down into darkness and the headlights cast weird shadows down the tracks until finally, Tuuri had called out, and Sigrun's voice had answered from out of the night.

…this was going to be just another one of those times, wasn't it? He just had to wait, and sit tight, and possibly pray, and eventually Mikkel would stick his head back inside and tell him that it was safe for him to come out now, that they were in the clear.

Except when Mikkel had come back, the first thing he'd said was that Reynir had better sit down, and he'd known what had happened and fallen to the floor of his own accord before Mikkel could even get out the next word.

What _was_ the last thing he'd said to her? He racked and racked his brain as they walked, but no matter how hard he tried, it just wouldn't come.

* * *

When they stopped for camp that night, Mikkel noticed Sigrun sitting by herself within sight of the tents, but still a respectable distance away, spreading a map of the Known World over the top of a large flat rock.

This wasn't one of the maps they'd been provided for the mission. It was too worn, too marked-up: it must have been something she'd brought with her, and carried a long time. Curious, he approached, and leaned in to inspect what she was doing.

"Was really hoping I wouldn't need it this time," she muttered, completely unbothered by his presence. Leaning in closer, Mikkel could see that the map was covered with solid black X's: most of them clustered around Dalsnes, but a few scattered throughout other parts of Norway and Sweden as well. Beside each of the marks, carefully written despite Sigrun's childish penmanship, there was a name. They were so numerous that many of them overlapped.

The new mark went on to the coast of Denmark, as swiftly and decisively as Lalli had marked that tree. Beside it, a name: Tuuri Hotakainen.

After which she nodded, and folded the map, and stuffed it back into her pocket. The both of them returned to camp in silence: there was nothing more to say.

They were going to move on because they had to… but none of them were ever going to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to add my own brief tribute, I guess.


	25. A Young Understanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the hardest part of helping people is the people you're helping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "[A Young Understanding](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KdXoNDtpGo)" by Sundara Karma
> 
> **Continuity:** Prequel to [Good Girls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10515987)
> 
> **Setting:** Alternate Reality (Medieval Fantasy)
> 
> **Characters:** Solveig
> 
> **Relationship:** Asbjørn/Solveig pre-romance
> 
> **Warnings:** Sexism; references to sexual harassment and attempted assault
> 
> **Other Tags:** Prequel to a prequel, culture clash

Trolls, it was said, bred in cycles.

Of course, no one alive today had been around to actually _see_ it… but then again their people valued the preservation of knowledge. They'd always known that this time would come—and when it did, they were prepared, and fought off the assault with many bloody losses, but they did survive.

They also knew that things were about to get much, much worse.

The village elders immediately called an emergency meeting. Every adult who was physically able crammed into the small space, even if only to confirm what they already knew: they wouldn't be able to handle this alone.

"We're going to need to ally with the lowlanders," old Sigrun said, and a hush fell over them all.

Most of them had never met a lowlander—indeed had never ventured down from their small mountain village—but they'd all heard the rumors. The people _down there_ treated their women like cattle; as soon as a girl started bleeding she was sold to the highest bidder to become breeding stock for the rest of her life. They were held in thrall to an evil cult that served a vengeful, bloodthirsty god. What wasn't in control of the church, was in the hands of the rich overlords, who demanded tribute from their people until families barely had enough to feed themselves…

"What?" Sigrun scoffed. "None of you are brave enough? And here I thought we'd called together the village's best warriors, not a group of frightened little children."

_That_ stung. Sigrun always had been good at goading people, and she always seemed to know _just_ what to say to get under someone's skin. Therefore, before she even found time to process what she was doing, never mind the fact that she was little more than a trainee who hadn't even earned her first piercing, Solveig found herself raising her hand.

"I volunteer."

Sigrun's eyes went to her—as did those of everyone else in the hall. The village chief looked her up and down, and Solveig found herself wishing she could sink into the floor. Finally, however, she gave a short nod: adequate.

"Well it's good to know that at least _one_ of you has some guts."

After that, everything was a whirl. They had no time to waste. It was a "they", too: Sigrun's own grandson had been chosen to accompany her.

"Neither of you is going down there alone," Sigrun had said when she'd partnered them up. "Too much risk from attacking trolls… not to mention other things."

"My grandfather was a lowlander," Asbjørn explained as they shouldered their packs. "So I guess you could say my family knows more about what it's like down there than most."

"Wait, really?" Old Uncle Aksel had been a fond figure from her childhood—he'd always been kind of a worrywart, always afraid she and the other kids were going to do something or other to get themselves killed—but had more than made up for it with his frequent gifts and entertaining stories. Still, he'd never once mentioned having grown up somewhere else. "How did they meet?"

"She went exploring down in the lowlands. Grandmother was like that when she was young—always looking for an adventure, and that was before the trolls were really a problem. They met on the road, he fell head over heels, and when she returned to the village he came with her."

"That's…" Solveig had been about to say "sweet," and wrinkled her nose at the thought of applying that word to the sharp-tongued old chief—it was just too weird. "…interesting," she finished instead.

Asbjørn laughed, as if he knew _exactly_ what she'd been about to say.

She was glad for that moment of humor. It was that last occasion that either of them would have to laugh for a good long while.

There was a reason they traveled in pairs: it was too easy to be ambushed out on the road. Their first trial occurred the very first night they attempted to camp.

Between the two of them, they made short work of the small group of trolls that would have dragged them off into the woods to make a meal of them. Even so, the encounter left Solveig's heart pounding so hard that she could not sleep for the rest of the night—just as well, she supposed, since she'd insisted on standing watch after that.

Then, they encountered the _people_.

The stares and whispers followed them every time they passed through a village. When they asked a question as simple as how they might inquire for an audience with whoever was in charge, the locals were frustratingly not forthcoming, a fact which was made even worse by the fact that their manner of speaking was so different they could barely understand each other.

"Do they think that we're going to eat them or something?" she whispered to Asbjørn as they settled into the church for the night, which had only _barely_ agreed to shelter them despite their assurances of goodwill. In answer, he only shrugged.

"Apparently Grandmother had to convince Grandfather that _she_ wasn't going to eat him after they first met, but I always thought she was just exaggerating." He paused to think for a few seconds. "Or that it was just her."

They still took the time to speak to the village headman before they left, and warn him of the approaching danger so that the people could be prepared. Even if they did seem woefully undersupplied.

_That's why_ we're _the first line of defense_ , Solveig reminded herself as they set out once more. _As long as the mountain villages remain vigilant, they should have enough time to fortify their defenses._

No sooner had she thought it when the new wave of attacks started.

It was lucky, both for the two of them and for that particular village, that they were there when it happened: even they, trained as they were, would not have been likely to survive such an onslaught alone due to the sheer difference in numbers, and the village would have suffered far more casualties had there not been two trained warriors available to take charge where nobody else knew how. Still, there _were_ casualties, and not even the warriors got out of it unscathed.

The church ( _every_ one of these villages had a church, they'd quickly learned—and no, there were no human sacrifices or heads on pikes that she could see) was packed with both the shrouded dead and the groans of injured or dying men. Though there were healers, most of them were simple midwives or acolytes, unused to treating so many at once. Still, they would take what they could get.

Solveig waited, hand pressed to the gash in her ribs through gritted teeth, for the healers to finish tending those who were in more urgent need of help: her wound might have been painful, but as long as she didn't let it bleed too much it wouldn't immediately threaten her life. By the time they got around to her, her eyelids were drooping, but _finally_ one of the healers (midwife, she guessed, from the brusque no-nonsense manner the woman displayed) came around to her and instructed her to take off her shirt.

At first, she was too tired to notice the hush that fell over the room immediately after she obeyed the simple request. A few seconds later, though, she finally got her head out from under the cloth and realized the whole room was staring at her.

"What?" she asked, dumbly. Asbjørn, who was sitting against a nearby wall and currently in the process of having his arm bandaged up, also looked around the room with a frown.

"You let your _women_ fight?" one of the men asked at last, addressing Asbjørn. He sounded appalled.

"I've never met a man who'd dare try to stop them," Asbjørn replied after the few minutes it took him to process this statement.

"Do you not value your women at all?" someone else asked. "It's our duty as men to protect the weaker sex! A lady—"

"This 'lady'," Solveig interrupted coldly, "is sitting right here, well-armed, and tired of being discussed to her face as if she's too simple to understand the topic of conversation."

There was a bit of uncomfortable shifting and muttering, but everyone shut up after that. After all, they'd all seen her all but dive between a troll's teeth to shover her sword through the roof of its mouth.

As they passed through town after town, they slowly began to gather up a posse of young men. They hadn't been quick enough to save everybody: the townspeople were desperate for whatever aid they could get.

Most of them were scared boys, younger even than the two of them, and a handful of farmers desperate to defend their families. Then, there were the young men who wanted to be heroes.

The two of them gave whatever training they could. They helped the townspeople to fortify their defenses however they could manage. Still, it was hard to leave knowing they were leaving behind more than one teenager who was all too likely to run straight into a horde of trolls brandishing nothing but a hoe.

Then, there were the ones who decided to go with them.

Each of them found out about Solveig in their own way—and each reacted in their own way as well. Some were offended. Some accepted their different customs for what they were, and let it go. Some were simply curious. Then, there were the ones who were a bit _too_ interested.

She was exotic to them, she thought. They'd never seen anything like her before, and found the novelty attractive. Or maybe they simply saw a woman who was not under the control even of the man she was traveling with, and it awoke their desire to conquer. Whatever the reason, Solveig ended up fending off far more advances than she would have liked. The absolute worst was the one she'd had to treat to a slap with the flat of her blade before he finally got the message and backed off.

"Well, he'll have a good scar," Asbjørn informed her upon his return, having escorted the overly-persistent youth to the nearest healer. "And hopefully better sense after he recovers."

Solveig only nodded. It had felt wrong to turn her blade against a person—even non-fatally. Even in self-defense.

A warm hand landed on her shoulder—not possessively like the lowland man had grabbed her, but a gesture of concern. "Will _you_ be okay?"

"I think so. Probably." A few seconds passed. "I don't think I'll ever be able to relax again," she confessed with a sigh.

"I'll be sure to watch your back better from now on, if that will help."

Their meetings with the local lords went… differently. She didn't know whether she could say it was better or not.

The men ranged from condescending to bluntly dismissive to refusing to even hear them out. They had their own armies, their own defenses. They had no need of advice from barbarians.

"Your people are _dying_ out there," Solveig said angrily, gesturing through the window of the fortified castle to indicate the unfortified villages and fields beyond.

"They have to see reason eventually," Asbjørn said later that night, while they were camped out in yet another church. He sounded less like he was trying to reassure her than like he was trying to convince himself.

"Oh, I'm sure that they will," she returned. "I'm just wondering how many people are going to have to die in order to make that happen."

They were quiet after that, but they slept huddled up against each other, taking comfort from each other's closeness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given some of the warnings Solveig gave to Sigrun in _Good Girls_ , I sort of started to wonder whether she had personal experience.
> 
> Funny enough, the other song on my vetting list for this letter would also have been part of the trans!Emil AU. It just would have involved victimizing Emil a bit more than I was comfortable with. So, I went with the Solveig backstory.


	26. A Zillion Notes Make Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Inspiration:** "A Zillion Notes Make Sound" by Your Rights to Harmonies (sorry no link this time, but I'll be putting the playlist up shortly)
> 
> **Setting:** Post-mission
> 
> **Characters:** Lalli
> 
> **Relationship:** Lalli  & Onni
> 
> **Warnings:** Major character death, references to canon character death
> 
> **Other Tags:** Finnish mythology, weird metaphors

For years after, Onni and Lalli would sit together, and listen. It had taken several years after the mission for Onni to tell Lalli that he didn't blame him for what had happened, and several more after that for Lalli to _believe_ him.

"Listen," Onni said one day. "Can you hear it?"

Lalli cocked his head. He could hear the wind in the trees. He could hear birdsong. He could hear the clear rushing of fresh-melted snow. Somehow, however, he did not think that that was what Onni meant.

"Hear what?" Lalli asked at last, inwardly cringing because he knew he was about to fail a test. Things had been so fragile between him and Onni ever since they'd gotten back. He didn't want to—

Onni shook his head. "No, of course not." Lalli didn't understand what was going on. His senses were good; if Onni could hear something, even if it was on another plane, then _he_ ought to be able to as well. "Don't worry about it," he continued after a few more minutes had passed. "Someday, you'll know what I'm talking about."

Later that year, he found out that Onni had fallen ill.

"What can I do?" he asked, helplessly, as his cousin got weaker, his cheekbones more sunken, and he was confined first to his quarters, then to his bed, with a nurse on call for all of the day and night.

"Nothing," Onni started, then let out a breath, turned, and met his eyes, his gaze piercing. "Nothing," he repeated, more firmly. "Guide me."

Lalli nodded. "Okay." His cousin squeezed his hand.

Then Onni left him too, and he was all alone.

He spent his nights in the forest. He filled his time with quiet things. He'd lost speed with age and these days he was no longer quick enough to scout, but he'd become a powerful mage with some dedicated training, and no matter where he went, he always had some skills that were useful.

Lalli didn't mind it so much, being all alone. It meant he'd never again have to face the pain of losing anyone else.

It wasn't until he was coming home late one night, his tracks breaking a layer of freshly-fallen snow, that he heard it.

A sound—distant, like song. Only a few notes here and there. It was not coming from the settlement—Lalli knew the customs and holidays at least that well, and besides the direction was different. Though it was too faint for him to truly pinpoint a direction, if he had to guess, he would have said…

…everywhere.

As more time passed, it only got louder, with more and more notes playing out around him. It should have been a distraction, but somehow it wasn't. Instead, it was as if Lalli could suddenly hear each individual rustle of branches as the wind blew through the trees… each crackle as the fire consumed a log… each droplet splashing at the base of a waterfall.

Only when he was sitting all alone, and recognized the sour notes of ache in his own body, did he realize what it was.

_So this is what you were trying to tell me_ , he realized, recalling Onni's proclamation and those last painful days.

By the time the snow melted, he could pick out the voices.

Of course. They would see each other again some day—they all knew that. What "seeing each other" entailed, in a land of eternal rest, he did not know. Now, all he knew was that his mind and heart had grown as weary of the years of solitude as his body had grown weary of the work he continued to push it through day after day, work that had been intended for a much younger man.

…he'd done enough, hadn't he? He'd spent the entirety of his life paying for mistakes that were not his. Surely now, surely, he'd be allowed to rest.

Lalli looked up. A pair of white wings beat wide against the night.

The voices of his family called out to him. His heart fluttered in his chest.

The wrap of the wings was like a warm embrace, and Lalli went with a smile to his eternal sleep.


	27. Playlist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genres: Indie Pop, Electronic, Neo Folk, Indie Rock, Symphonic Metal, Indie, Alternative Rock, Film Score, Punk Rock, Southern Metal, Heavy Metal, Instrumental Rock, Classical Crossover, EDM, Folk, Pop, Orchestra, New Wave, Downtempo, Indie Pop
> 
> "Omnivorous" doesn't even begin to cover my taste in music.


End file.
